We Were Born to Die
by eminemini
Summary: Bella Swan is a young college student experiencing a premature midlife crisis. Edward is the overly friendly classmate who captures her attention. Will Bella's personal problems get in the way of a budding friendship, or maybe more? (Lemons later. Be patient with me)
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

_The staircase before me, made up of floating porcelain steps that sparkled in the sunlight, stretched out endlessly before me. There was something at the top, something that I needed to reach, but I couldn't bring myself to take that first step forward. I hated heights. They terrified me._

_ "Come on, Bel. You can make it. Just go up."_

_ I drew in a long, shaky breath. I wanted to more but I couldn't. My legs weren't listening._

_ "I...I can't. I can't." I murmured, but something shoved me foreward._

_ I blinked and there I was, halfway between the top and the bottom, immobilized by fear. I felt something catch in my throat. I was so close but not close enough. I couldn't turn back and I couldn't go forward, so I crouched down on the step, feeling it buckle underneath me._

I woke up breathing hard, gasping for air, tears streaming down my face. My chest heaved. I shot upright. The room was pitch black. I was drenched in sweat, alone, no sound but that of my own panting filling my ears. I wiped my cheeks with dampened palms, brushed away the stray hairs that were stuck to the back of my neck and worked to slow my pulse. This happened much more often that I would like to admit.

I threw the covers back, shivering when my bare feet hit the cold floors. What time was it? I tip toed to the door, peeking out to see if I was alone before stepping into the hallway completely naked. I could hear my mother snoring from behind her bedroom door. There was no sound of the television playing in the family room which meant that Bree must be asleep, too. There was no one to keep me company. I decided I should go back to sleep.

But, as usual, I found that I couldn't. I couldn't even bring myself to go back into my bedroom. Instead, I paced up and down the long narrow hallway, huffing through flared nostrils and trying to convince myself that I wasn't having a panic attack. Of course, I was.

My therapist (the tired old man that my mother paid to talk to me about these sorts of things) told me to "concentrate on my breathing" when this happened. But how could I concentrate on breathing when there was no air. The apartment felt foreign to me, as it always did in the wee hours of the night, but I ignored that. This was nothing new. It was just the way I was wired.

I decided to go to the kitchen, carefully creeping along hoping I wouldn't wake the people I had just been wishing weren't asleep. I opened the refrigerator, then the pantry, then the bread droor, then the refrigerator again. Nothing looked appealing so I settled for potato chips, cream cheese and a luke warm cup of coffee poured from the pot I'd made right before bed.

My mother would tell me that my excessie caffein intake was the reason for my insomnia, but we both knew that wasn't it. I was always keyed up. The coffee gave me a nice buzz. If anything, I felt calmer with that big red mug in my hand, savoring the bitter aftertaste as the fluid slid down my throat.

I glanced up at the clock on the microwave: 5:30. I decided it wasn't too early to get dressed for class.

My biology lecture wasn't until 9:00 but getting ready was something that I could channel my nervous energy into. I smeared a particularly large chip with creamcheese before shoving everything back into the refrigerator, throwing back the last of my coffee and heading back towards my room.

I ignored the rumpled bed, probably still warm from all of my body heat, and headed towards my closet. I threw the doors open, taking in row after row (and pile after pile) of gently-loved, uniquely stylish clothing items I had purchansed at either Goodwill or off the clearance rack at Target. Suddenly, I didn't like anything. I could feel that little wrinkle forming in my forehead, reminding me of how Bree was always telling me that my face would "stick that way" if I didn't break the habit. I had a terrible case of resting bitch face, but honestly couldn't bring myself to care enough to make the conscious effort to correct it.

I went with the safe choice: a short black dress with small white flowers. It was too big, like most everything in my wardrobe, and I liked it that way. Slipping it over my head, foregoing a bra entirely because who really cared? Not me. The one pair of unripped tights I had managed to presere for the past two month were draped over the desk chair, waiting expectantly for me. I snatched them up, as I did every morning because they were basic and a good and faithful leg covering, and pulled them on. Grabbing my phone off the bedside table, I sighed. It was now 5:38.

I put my earing in (all seven of them), flirted with the idea of wearing makeup to class before trying to put my contacts in and realizing too late that this would ruin my mascara. Instead, I wiped my face clean with a washcloth and turned my attention to my hair instead: dark brown and hopelessly knotted. This was my own fault. I had been out of commission with the common cold for the past three days and had foregone any sort of hair brushing. Now, the end had started to tangle into dread-like clumps. Biting my lip, I ripped through them with a comb and, when that didn't really work, I gave up and pulled everything back into a horrendously sloppy bun. If my hair had been longer, I might have liked this. But I'd made the impulse decision of buzzing off most of my hair last Christmas and now, I was stuck somewhere in between short hair and not-so-short hair. Story of my life.

I slipped my feet into my moccasins: shoes who had far surpassed their life expectancy and now made an unsettling squeak everytime I applied weight to my right heel. I had decided that this bothered people around me much more than it did me. They were the most comfortable thing I owned.

By the time the alarm on my phone went off, I was well on my way into the city, stuck in rush hour traffic because I had left too early. If I'd waited until 8 o'clock, the commute wouldn't have taken me longer than thirty minutes, but I'd been too damn anxious for that. I listened to the gentle thrum of the radio, the engine, the sound of cars whizzing past my open window in the turn lane. Why couldn't I be going wherever they were going? At least then I'd be moving.

In all truthfulness, though, I never stopped moving. I never gave myself a chance to breathe. I liked it that way. It was the only way I knew how to be. Ever since I could remember I had been on the move, always planning the next thing. Tomorrow was the most important day of the week and I never intended on wasting it. I lived for tomorrow and my inability to stand still exhausted everyone in my life.

Indianapolis was just coming alive when I crossed 38th into central downtown. The busses were making the same stops they made every morning; kids were walking to school; commutors wove in and out of traffic, probably running late to work. I wasn't late but I drove like I was. I had never quite grasped the concept of "slow and steady wins the race."

By 8 o'clock, I was parked and my 8:15 I was firmly planted in lecture hall, anxiously awaiting the arrival of anyone else.

I sat silently for a long time, munching on a packet of crackers I had picked up and sipping the coffee I had picked up from the Caribou across the street. I took it straight black and, most days, Bree would complain that I smelled like a blue-collar dad. This always made me laugh. My sister was only thirteen, but she was a spunky thirteen. She reminded me of myself and that simultaneously struck me with both pride and terror.

It was half past eight when people started filing in, one by one, slowly finding one another and pairing off. I kept my eyes down, pulling out my sketch book and flipping through the pencil drawings-mostly sketches of women with long hair and big eye lashes and boys with rumbled clothes and five o'clock shadows. I liked the idea of people like them, of glamorous ladies with old-hollywood red lips and disheveled artistic types. They seemed romantic, sitting there stoically on my paper. I lost myself in them.

"Whatcha drawin'?" someone asked from behind me.

I glanced back breifly, catching sight of faded jeans and slender, pale hands. I smiled to myself. "Just...whatever."

I didn't see the stranger behind me nod but I could feel it, like you feel someone standing too close to you. But then he was gone.

I glanced behind me, then shrugged returning my attention to the new blank page before me. My pencil hovered over the paper.

"You like art, huh? I wish I could draw." The voice came from somewhere to my right. I looked up and there he was. For a second, I was too surprised to answer.

I didn't know him, but he looked into my eyes like he's talked to me a million times, messy auburn hair falling clumsily over his forehead and obscuring my view. He smiled crookedly at me and I worked to recorver my composure.

"Um...I guess. It's just sort of something I do...you know, when I'm bored."

He smiled wider. "Busy work, huh?" I nodded. "You mind?" he asked, motioning to the seat beside mine. I shrugged.

"No. Go for it."

This was our second week of class but I had never seen him before. Then again, there were three-hundred people in lecture and we hadn't had our first lab yet. He plopped down beside me casually, tossing his bag into the next seat and shuffling through it for a notepad and pencil. When he turned back to me, I raised a brow at him in question.

"I'm Bella." I offered, considering extending my one of my hands for him to shake but choosing to fold them in my lap instead.

He only nodded before directing his attention forward, whispering now because Dr. Mullens had taken his place at the front of the room, shuffling through papers as though we would pay attention to any information presented that wasn't on the power point.

"Nice to meet you, Bella."

And that was the end of that.

We sat there silently, waiting, uncomfortably close. I didn't like it when strangers sat by me. Seats in the lecture hall were crammed tightly together and, every few minutes, one of us would adjust ourseles and brush arms. I held my breath, hoping that someone I knew would get here soon and aleviate my discomfort.

Rosalie and Alice were ten minutes late.

When they sat on the other side of me, Alice leaned over to whisper in my ear. "Who's he?" she asked, barely audibly. I shrugged, eyes wide, mothing the words _no idea_ before crossing my arms tightly over my chest as Dr. Mullens dove into the evolutionary history of gymnosperms.

Great.

When the lecture ended, the boy (who never did tell me his name) got up and left without another word. I decided not to read too much into it. I packed up my bag, along with my sketches, and turned to Alice and Rose who were, to be totally honest, taking too damn long to shuffle out of our row.

"Could you guys get a move on? I'm hungry." I huffed, tapping Rose in the back of the leg with my foot.

"Fine, Bel. What's got your panties in a twist?" Rose chuckled, flipping her long blonde hair behind her shoulder.

"It's not my panties. It's my stomach."

I kicked at her heels again, urging her up the staircase.

Rosalie and Alice and I had met last semester during our orientation. We were all commuters from Indy and had spent the first few weeks of our Summer program carpooling. Our schedules had changed after that, of course, and I had declined their offer to come early for eight o'clock lecture. Why, I had no idea. I was here early anyway.

I followed both of them silently out of lecture hall, listening to the two of them laugh about something someone had said, maybe a bit louder than was normal. I loved them for this. It made me feel more comfortable, like maybe I wasn't the only overly talkative person around. I had a nervous talking problem. Most days, it was pretty unmanageable.

"Where you guys headed?" I always asked because I never knew what they were doing. Alice and Rose never made the same plans twice.

"I might come to lunch today." Alice piped in, ever softspoken and peppy. She bounced a little as she said this and I smiled.

"Great. I think Angela might meet up with us. Rose?"

Rose nodded, her lips persed.

"You guys, makin' me spend all my money..." she complained as she led the way toward the dorm cafeteria. "The food here isn't even good."

"Ya, it sucks." I admitted. "But _I'm hungry_!"

They both laughed. We ignored the no crossing sign as we sprinted quickly across Michigan. Traffic whizzed past as we stepped up on the curb. Jaywalking was the norm on campus and I almost didn't think twice about it, though it always scared Rose. Alice had told me a few months ago that, if we did get hit, she hoped that flowers would grow through the asphault in that place. I guessed that was one way of looking at it.

I had been at this school for a little over a semester now and the woman who took our cards at the buffet knew me. She had told me the previous week "you always look so pretty, but your hair is always a mess." It was true, and I couldn't help thinking about it today as I handed over my student I.D., hyper aware of the ridiculously sloppy bun perched atop my head. I stopped near the buffet entrance to wait for the girls and dropped my bag, pulling on the drawstring and shuffling around its contents. It was a ridiculously big bag and I found my sweater (my favorite one, the giant brown one) somewhere near the bottom. Yanking on it perhaps a bit more roughly than I needed to, I heard rather than saw several things clatter to the ground.

I closed my eyes and groaned, something along the lines of "seriously" coming out in a frustrated huff. I dropped everything all the time. It was a superpower of mine.

"Having trouble there?" I heard someone ask.

When I looked up, it was the boy from biology.

I nodded, mute for whatever stupid reason. Really? I chose now not to talk? Glancing past him, I noticed the girls were gone. They left me. Awesome.

He bent to help me, gathering up the items I hand thrown free. When I heard the sound of a pill bottle being jostled, I hit the panic button. Snatching it quickly away, I shoved it back in my bag, hoping he hadn't had time to read the word '_diazipam' _printed in neat font across the small white RX sticker. OR maybe, if he had, he wouldn't know what it was for.

"Thanks." I spit out, getting to my feel and shrugging quickly into my sweater, struggling a bit to shift my bag from one shoulder to the other. I really needed a new bag. I needed a smaller bag. I needed to clean out my freaking bag.

"Welcome." I said simply, smirking at me a little before gesturing behind me. I turned. "Well, I'm meeting friends so."

"Ya, cool. Thanks again." I nodded, feeling sillier than I had ever felt.

He walked away and so did I. When I spotted Rose and Alice, they had already found Angela and claimed a table right at the front of the dining area: prime seats for viewing the little incident previously described.

"Did you hook up with this guy or something and not tell us? You clearly know each other." Rose asked. Rosalie and her questions, I swear.

I could feel myself blushing.

"Oh, my God. No! I don't even freaking know him. I don't know what the deal is."

This time, it was Alice to make me blush. "Well, I think he's cute. You should."

"Should what?"

"Hook up with him." she replied cashually, getting to her feet.

I hushed her. "Stop." My eyes were big and serious now. "Seriously."

I looked to Angela for help.

"I think what Alice is trying to say..." I waited for Angela to say something wise. She was always so reasonable. I needed someone reasonable. "...is that there are a lot of-"

"Beautiful men at this school." Rose finished for her, prodding me in the rib and dragging me towards the buffet. "Why should the girls who live on campus have all the fun while we just..._waste away_?" The last part was said with whistful drama, her blue eyes focussing on something far away.

I snorted.

"It's not like any of you have anything exciting going on. Aren't you like saving yourself for marriage or something?"

Alice laughed.

"Rose is saving herself for marriage so long as no one who meet her standards invited her to take a roll in the hay."

"Roll in the hay?" Rose asked, one perfectly manicured eyebrow raised. "Is that what the kids are calling it these days."

"Fine. Fucking."

"Nice." I mumbled.

"Doesn't really matter." Alice continued. "'Cause, as Bella so gently pointed out, none of us are rolling around in anything."

Honestly, the sex analogies were golden.

"What about you, Ang?" I asked, hoping to take the spotlight off of myself. "How's Eric?"

"Good."

Eric and Angela had been together since sophomore year of high school. All three of us went to church together and I had known them both for a while. They were always solid, except for one teeny tiny issue: Angela had a not-so-secret thing for Mike Newton, our pastor's son.

The saga of Angela and Mike was a complex one, mostly consisting of kinda-sorta almost dates and unanswered text messages, emails, etc. The word on the street was that Mike had a thing for Jessica Stanley and, since Angela and Eric had been malking marriage and engagement rings, we all assumed that this crush would continue to be an awkward but unimortant fixure in the social lives of everyone involved with Angela and Eric. They would get married and have babies and she would alway wonder a little bit what her kids would like like with blonde hair and blue eyes.

"So..." Angela began, plopping a piece of pizza down onto both of our plates. Rose and Alice had wandered towards the dessert table.

I made a face as she plopped mash potatoes next to the pizza on my plate. "Really, Ang?"

"What?" she shrugged. "You never eat. Anyway, if you don't know that guy what's the deal. Rose and Alice said he was sitting next to you in bio this morning."

I shrugged. It seemed to be the gesture of the day. "I don't know. He sat down and asked me about my sketched and I told him my name and he said 'nice to meet you'...then, I dropped that stuff and..."

"And?" she prompted.

"And he picked up my prescription." Angela persed her lips, looking as though she felt sorry for me. I hated that look. "So now either he just thinks I'm a klutz or he thinks I'm crazy. So it's a _win-win_."

Angela patted my shoulder. "Hey, watch the sarcasm. You might hurt yourself."

I gave her one dry chuckle.

"Speaking of which..." I checked my watch. It was almost eleven. "I gotta use the bathroom. I'll be right back, okay?"

She nodded.

I stopped by our table to set down my tray then headed for the ladies room. I checked the stalls. It was empty. I exhaled a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding, trying very hard not to replay the last fifteen minuted in my mind.

Tossing my bag up on the counter, I shuffled through all the crap I had shoved in their at one time or another and finally pulled out the bottle of diazepam the guy from biology had picked up off the cafeteria floor. Why was I so afraid of people knowing I had these?

I got diagnosed at fourteen when I had a bad episode. They'd saddled me with a pretty significant list of psychological mumbo-jumbo and put me on suicide watch. They'd given me electroconvusive therapy to combat the clinical depression. It was a quick fix for a bigger problem. I was diagnosed with severe panic disorder and sent home with a prescription for Valium and bi-weekly visits to Dr. Vega's office for talk therapy. Angela was the only person outside my family who knew. And I wanted to keep it that way.

Popping the pills in my mouth, I swallowed.

I needed to feel calm.

Why could I never seem to get calm?


	2. Chapter 2

Discalimer: I own nothing.

Author's note: So, I was really tired the other night when I posted chapter one and realised that I cut it off at a weird spot. I added to it today and wasn't sure if anyone following this story got notified about that. Anyway, there is more in chapter one now. Hope everyone enjoyed :)

Chapter Two

_I stood in a white hall. There were stairs in front of me, climbing u, up, up as far as the eye could see. There was nothing up there but there was no way out of here. I had to go up the stairs. Why was it always stairs._

_ I took and deep breath and took off running, following the winding path around and around but it felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. Suddenly, I felt like I might actually be running from something. But what? I ran faster, relieved when I finally saw a landing, a dark doorway leading somewhere I couldn't see._

_ I didn't think, only leaped through the doorframe, only to realise that there was no ground for me to land on on the other side of the threshold._

_ I was falling._

I jolted awake, tumbling foraward and out of the chair I had been slouched in. It was Wednesday. I was halfway through the week. But today was a long day. Since we were having our first lab today, I wouldn't be going home until six o'clock.

I straightened myself up in my chair. Alice and Rose, who were sitting around a computer to my right, gave me a cursory glanc before turning back to whatever it was they were looking at. I fell asleep in the library quite frequently and, likewise, woke up from a nightmare (or daymare?) more often than not. I checked my phone. It was almost two. It didn't do me any good to go to class with bedhead (or chairhead), so I go up and headed to the bathroom to fix myself.

I always had a hard time finding the women's room no matter how many times I had been there. It was tucked away in a remote corner of the library beside a very discreet sign. The university had a thing for artsy, new age bathroom door signs and they all confused me. Once found, I pushed the swinging door open and threw my bag up onto the sink. When I looked up, I sighed.

Mirrors were and will always be the worst sort of reality check invented by man.

My hair was a mess as usual but there was no helping that. I had let it air dry last night and now it was wildly curly and unmanageable. My eyes scanned downard to my white lace top and black joggers. The fabric of both was light and comfortable. The top was soft, feminine, and hung from my shoulders in a way that made me look particularly thin. Angela was right. I drank more coffee than I ate food and it was taking a toll. I had lost eight pounds this semester and this was only the second week.

What was wrong with me?

I pulled my hair up into a messy bun, my go-to hairstyle, and thanked God I had worn nice earings. Popping a few pills, I decided that makeup probably wouldn't hurt me. And by makeup, I meant tinted lip balm.

That should do it.

I went back to where Rose and Alice were sitting and asked them if they were ready to go to lab. Mostly, I was wondering how our merry little threesome was going to divide. I had originally agreed to register for bio with Alice, mostly with the intentions of never leaving her side until the semester was over. But then Rose had showed up on the first day of lecture, thrilled to be in the same class as us, and suddenly all of my plans flew out the window. I couldn't help feeling that Rose and Alice were just a little bit closer than Alice and I, which meant I had the oportunity to do a lot of third-wheeling.

"Are you going to homecoming?" Alice asked me as we boarded the elevator. I pressed the 'close doors' button a few dozen times before finally giving up and waiting like the adult I was supposed to be.

"Um...I don't know. When is it?"

"Saturday."

I thought about that. Did I want to go to homecoming?

I'd always hated school dances. I'd even ditched out on senior prom. My date and I had ended up making out in the parkinglot for two and a half hours just so my mom wouldn't ask me why I was home so early. Why would college dances be any more exciting? I shook my head.

"That's a negative, Ghostrider."

Rose groaned. "Ugghh! Why not?"

"It's not my thing."

"You need to make it your thing." Rose huffed. We were halfway across the main counrtyard now. If I could hold my own just a bit longer, we would be in class and they would have to drop it. "Besides, I need a ride."

"No." I told her with a roll of the eye. "Alice can take you. I don't like dances. They're dumb. No one ever has fun."

"Yes they do. I had fun at prom." Alice argued, skipping a little every other step.

"Of course, you did, Al. You always think eveything is fun."

"It was fun!"

"I just...it doesn't sound that great, okay? If it makes you feel any better, I volunteered to work on the homecoming mural."

Rose chuckled dryly. We were walking through the doors of the lab building now. I had almost made it. "That is not a social event, Bella. You painting a picture to advertise a social event is not the same as you being a part of one."

"But I like to paint. And it is! There will be other people there and I absolutely promise I will talk to them. Maybe I'll even get someone's number. It'll be like homework." I joked but Rose nodded in a way that told me she was serious.

"We'll see about that Swan. I expect to see this phone number. And I'm gonna call it to make sure it's not the phone number to, like, the China Wok or something."

"Ha. Ha. Very funny." I groused, checking her into the doorframe as we wondered into room 123.

Aisles of lab benches grouped into two sat before me and, just as I had suspected they would, Rose and Alice took their seats at the table closest to the front of the room, leaving me an empty seat at the table next to them.

I screamed internally. Why me? I didn't bother setting my bag down gently. I chucked in under the table, fitting the sheet metal at the back of the counter and causing a loud clattering.

"Really?" I half shreiked, plopping into my seat and crossing my arms.

"You okay there?"

I turned to see who was talking to me. I half expected to see the boy from lecture, but it was someone else entirely. I had never met this boy. I smilled and gave him a quick, polite "I'm fine," guessing that he would probably sit down at my table.

Instead, he offered me a single nod and went to sit on the other side of the room. One after another, students filed in. In between my eavesdropping on Alice and Rose's gosipping, I watched them. Some I recognized from lecture, mostly the people who sat at the front and that one girl who somebody said was an "exotic dancer." I waited expectantly for someone to take the place next to me but nobody did and when the TA got up to begin instructing us, I gave up hope. I was terrible at labs. At birth, I had been afflicted with an age-old curse known as _shaky hands_. It really was quite tragic. Small, detail-oriented tasks and I did not mix well. Not to mention the nerves.

I leaned back, pushing off on the cross bar of the lab bench and hit something behind me. I heard what sounded like pencils clattering to the floor. Glancing back, I came face to face with the guy from lecture.

Was this some kind of cosmic joke?

"We've gotta stop bumping into one another like this." he jested, bending to get his things.

I spun my chair around swiftly and bent to help. "I am _so _sorry." I insisted, handing one of the pencils back to him. I was blushing again.

"They're just pencils, Bella."

He'd remembered my name. I don't know why this threw me but it did. I smiled, nodding. I needed to hear what the TA was saying so I straightened and turned back to the front. I was hyperaware of his moements as he took a seat to my left. This was going to be a very long three hours.

He were supposed to start out by looking at slides through the microsope which was something I had done a million times. The slides were up at the front table all laid out and sorted into boxes for us. My lab partner (I felt relieved that I now had a term to refer to him by other than "that guy from bio") had offered to grab them. Now, we sat close together, taking turns peaking through the microsope's lenses.

"Wow. The miracle of life." he enthused.

I laughed. "It's a leaf."

"It's alive."

I raised a brow at him. "Touche."

Slipping in the next slide, my partner peered through the bifocal momentarily before handing it off to me. I looked. It was green. I was a plant. It was utterly, mind-numbingly boring.

"You excited?"

I didn't answer, only gave him a look.

It took us about ten minutes to get through our microscope mini-lesson and another ten to get the instructions from our TA on what to do next. We were testing semi-permeable membranes of dialysis tubing. It was something about sucrose concentrations and centrifuges. I only half listened. Everything was foggy today. Maybe it was the three cups of coffee I'd had at lunch.

"Why are your hands shaking?" lab guy asked.

I smirked a little. Stupid curse. "They do that."

"Do they?"

"Yeah."

I glanced over at Alice and Rose, totally at ease but having trouble opening their tubing. If I was being honest, I would say I was more than a little mad at Alice for leaving me to fend for myself. We'd had plans and now I was trapped with "lab guy."

"You know..." he began, regaining my attention. "I'm really sorry if I make you nervous."

I could feel my eyes grow wide. I looked down at my shaky hand as I pressed down the plunger on the pipette. I felt murderous. Alice definitely should not have abandoned me.

"You do not make me nervous."

"No even a little bit." he laughed, staring down at me with humorous green eyes. I looked away. I refused to make eye contact. "It's okay."

"No, it's not." I insisted. "I don't get nervous."

And there it was: literally the _biggest_ lie I had ever told in my entire life.

"Really?" he pressed, clearly thinking I was full of shit which, of course, I was.

I stuck with it anyway. "Really."

When we finally finished filling the tubing, I placed it in the solution and passed him the label and marker. We wouldn't want Shaky Hands writing out her name and...oh, yeah, I didn't know his name. I was beyond asking at this point. I decided that I didn't care. That was also total bull. Of course, I cared.

I waited for him to fill it out but he didn't, only continued reading his lab papers and then mumbled something about getting what we needed next before walking away. I was beginning to think he didn't want to tell me his name, that or he was the most socially inept human I had ever met. Why in the world hadn't he told me his name yet?

I didn't say anything else to him as we put together the samples for our next lab. I held the test tubes this time while he pipetted in the ingredients-mostly things like corn starch with a side of Sudan IV for that science-y touch. I managed to remain silent though all the labeling and hand shaking of our test tubes. I didn't even respond verbally when lab guy asked me to go put them into the centrifuge.

Now, here's the thing about the centrifuge. My mother had been sick for years and we had one on the shelf in her office. When I would help her take her bloodtests to give to the in-home nurses who came on Thusdays, I would pop them into the centrifuge on the shelf before putting them in a bowl in the fridge. I had done it once a month for the past three years but, for some reason, on that first day of lab, I forgot something very important.

If you've ever used a centrifuge (or even if you haven't, the TA gave us instructions), you would know that the chamber has to be balanced or it will shake off the counter. I didn't know just how loud that whole event was, however, until, in front of thirty-five of my peers and a very agitated Teaching Assistant, I almost broke the centrifuge.

I rushed to hit the stop button but it didn't stop and the TA had to stop it for me. When there was finally silence again, she told me in a thick accent that I "must ballance the centrifuge" before walking quickly back to her desk. I did just that and started it spinning again, humilliated by the barely contained chuckles humming through the room.

I went to sit down.

Hadn't I done enough damag for one day? Cupping my face in my hands, I exhaled slowly. Now would be a wonderful time to disappear.

"You shouldn't break the equipment, Bella." lab guy told me. I could hear the smile in his voice. I knew I must be beat red.

"Uggghhh..."

"And you said you don't get nervous..."

That was it. "No." I shook my head at him, dropping my hands to my lap and imploring him with my eyes to listen. "You think I'm acting like a moron because you make me nervous but really I'm just..."

I hadn't thought this through.

"A moron?" he finished.

And this time I coudn't help myself. I bursed out laughing, nodding in acquiesense. "Yeah. Pretty much."

We were both laughing now and I felt as though I had finally broken the ice. I was still embarrassed. My cheeks felt like they were on fire, but at least I was laughing about it. That was better than my first choice which had been, obviously, to crawl under a rock and die.

"So..." lab guy started once we had calmed down a bit. We had ten minutes of incubation before we could measure our results and get the hell out of Dodge. "What's your favorite color?"

"For real? What is this? 20 Questions?"

"Maybe." he smiled. He had such a nice smile.

I looked at him for a moment before answering. "Green."

"Ok. Favorite decade?"

"Favorite decade?" I asked, a little confused, but he looked at me with an expression that urged me to reply. "Um...the 70s, I guess?"

He looked surprised. "Really? The seventies was only the most gaudy, ridiculous decade in American history. Why the 70? Is it the music, fashion, general pop culture?"

I chuckled again, leaning mu elbow on the table and my chin on my fist. "All of it." I said. "I love how out there it all was, like, there were no rules. Anything goes. You wanna go into the wilderness and like slay a giant fuzzy puff ball creature and harvest its skin and wear it as a coat with a peace sign and some bell-bottoms? Do it. Great. You're Sonny Bono."

For a long moment, lab guy wouldn't stop staring at me, just sitting there grinning like a kid on Christmas. I stared right back, watched him closely as he ran a hand through is messy auburn hair. His nose was slightly crooked but I liked it. It suited him.

"What?" I asked.

"I'd like to get to know you, Bella." was all he said before getting up to retrieve our samples.

Five minutes later, all out stats had been recorded. We lad a lab report due next Wednesday. It was ten 'til six. I had spent nearly three hours with lab guy and I still didn't know his name.

"Well, it was a pleasure working with you, partner." he said as she pulled on his leather jacket and shifted his book bag onto his right shoulder.

"Ditto." I said. "You want me to just go up and turn in these charts, or..."

He thought for a second. "Umm, no we'll just go up there real quick before we go. Cool?"

I nodded, snatching the papers up and heading towards the TA's desk, lab guy close behind me. She looked over out charts quickly, bobbing her head up and down a few times before conceding that "these were fine" and "we could go."

We both turned to leave, but she stopped us.

"Sorry." she said. "I just need your names."

"Oh, sorry. It's Bella Swan. S. W. A. N. Swan."

The TA wrote my name down and I waited not so patiently for lab guy to take his turn.

"Edward." he said. "Edward Cullen. C. U. L. L. E. N. Cullen,"

"Ok. Good. Thank you." was all she said before packing up her folder and leaving us alone in the lab.

"After you."

"_Edward_, huh?"

He laughed. "Did I not tell you my name before just now?"

I shook me head 'no,'

"Sorry about that."

"It's alright, Mr. Cullen. I forgive you."

And this time when I turned to leave I did not look back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything.**

**Author's note: Pretty, pretty please leave me a review! It really encourages me to write the next chapter sooner lol And it makes me smile! :)**

I sat in the black vinyl chair staring up at the ceiling, bracing myself for impact. I had eight piercings at the moment, incuding my industial bar which I guess counted as two. In that case, this would be the tenth artificial hole in my body. I liked the way my peircings looked, liked the feeling I got whenever I got a new one. When the needle slid through the flesh of my right nostril, I barely even flinched.

I sat up and Tanya handed me a mirror. Tanya had done all of my body piercings since I had gotten my belly button done when I was thirteen. After that, she'd done my industrial, one failed forward helix and now my nose. The three studs that lined my earlobes I had done myself in my bathroom with safety pins. It had started with one and moved it's way up. Tanya said I shouldn't self-impale, but I had never been a very good listener.

The black ring in my nose made me smile.

"I love it." I told her.

"Good. I'm glad." Getting up, I followed her out to the front counter, wiping the few tears that had fallen from my eyes. The watering was worse than I had thought it would be. "The question is, when am I gonna get you in the tattoo chair?"

I shrugged.

I had told Tanya a while ago that I wanted to get one. She and her husband owned this shop and they both did really beautiful work. A few of my friends had gotten tattoos done here (by my recommendation, of course) and were all very happy with the final product. Rose was always telling me that tattoos didn't have to have any deep meaning but I couldn't help feeling that mine would. I wanted one; I just had no idea what I would want to get done.

"You think about it more." Tanya smiled. "We'll still be here when you make up your mind."

I paid and told her I would call her if I had any problems, then stepped out into the cool late January air. The wind blew hard, sending stray hairs falling over my face. I pulled my coat tighter around my body and tucked the few wild locks behind my ears. I was only about three blocks from home but that felt like a long wallk in this weather.

A few years ago, I might have called my mom and asked her for a ride. Renee was the kind of person that wanted to help everyone with anything she could. But, these days, she spent more time in her bed than she did out of it. My mom had been diagnosed with kidney failure three-and-a-half years before and, from there, it had been a long ride down. The doctors kept saying she would be started on dialysis soon, that she would be feeling better, but that seemed like a far off dream. An even farther off dream was an organ trasplant. My mother had a rare blood type and odds were slim, or so we had been told.

My dad had passed away when Bree was just a baby. He got shot in a traffic stop gone wrong. I'd never really gotten to know him that well. I had been just a little girl at the time and he worked late hours. Which mean that, for almost as long as I could remember, it had been just Renee, Bree and me. Now, I worried that my sister would be the only person I had left. I worried that my mom would get too sick. I worried that she would suffer. I worried she would die before we got the chance to make it all better.

Feeling the panic creeping up on me, I shoved these thoughts down and walked just a little bit faster. It was cold and I wanted to go inside but I wasn't sure I wanted to go home. Renee was probably in her bedroom, coughing and moaning. Bree had gone to stay at a friends' (on a Thursday for some reason) and was riding the bus in the morning, so she wouldn't be home till late the next afternoon.

When I got home, no one was there. I found a note on the counter from Renee saying that she had gone to visit my grandma in Geist and that she planned to sleep there since Bree was gone and it was such a long drive for her to make late at night. I sighed. The thought of being alone in my mother's apartment with nothing but potato chips and Netflix to keep me company made me feel more than a little flustered. I was filled with dread. Riffling through my bag, I popped a few pills in my mouth and swallowed them dry. Most people would like having the house to themselves. I just wasn't one of them.

I had a full tank of gas and nowhere to be until the morning. I decided to get away.

I packed a bag for myself. I didn't really know where I planned to go, but I knew I needed to. An oversized blue sweater, a pair of jeans and few toiletries was all I needed for my quick, twenty-four hour excursion. I locked up and pulled out of our reserved parking spot out front, onto main street and towards the expressway entrance ramp.

I didn't have any particular destination in mind. I just drove. I got off at the Shadeland Ave. exit and found myself wandering around, drifting closer and closer to the center of downtown. It was dark before long but I didn't stop driving. It was cathardic. I listened to the radio, rolled down my windows and sang along. No one was watching me. No one expected anything from me. For once, I was totally free.

When I found myself on campus, I decided to make use of my student parking pass and pulled into a lot near the campus center and lecture hall. I killed the engine and listened to the sound of sirens in the distance. I closed my eyes. What was I doing? I decided not to think about it.

I unbuckled my seat belt and threw the car door open. It was even colder than it had been a few hours ago. I walked around the lot, thinking and trying to decide where I wanted to go. The library was a safe bet: a public neutral space. There were never many people there this time of the evening and they stayed open until one o'clock on week days.

Teeth still chattering from the moderately long walk, I made my way up the four (more like eight) very ambitious flights of stairs to the fourth floor lounge area. When I finally made it up the last step, breathing hard, the couches were empty as I had anticipated. But instead of putting my things down on the long green sofa, I headed towards the back, my bag dragging on the ground behind me. I was deep in the stacks now, by the old copied of German literature and, for some strange reason, Mario Puzzo novels which I hadn't realized were so numerous. A small cluster of chairs in the corner near the copy room called to me.

I sat down there and stared straight ahead. I was alone, just like I would have been at home, but somehow this seemed better. I could breathe here. That was all that mattered. I closed my eyes again and leaned my head back.

I couldn't remember the very first time I'd ever had a panic attack. I could remember a few times when I was little when I'd thought strange things or had strange feelings but how was anyone supposed to differentiate between childish fits and a panic attack. I had no idea. Though, when I was about fifteen or sixteen, I had started having a hard time. I had some nerves here, one panic attack there and suddenly I was panicky all the time. I was so nervous I felt as though all of the distress would give me a heart attack. I had started seeing Simon, my therapist, when my mother was diagnosed as part of a ploy to help me "cope with my greif." He had referred me to the Good Doctor, Carslisle, who had prescribed my Valium. I still attended therapy but, for the most part, I pill-popped.

"It's kinda late isn't it?"

The voice to my left took me by surprised and my eyes shot open, my spine going ramrod straight. Everything was a little bleary for a moment before I had a chance to focus in on the face patiently awating a response less than two feet away from me.

It was Edward.

"Um, yeah, I guess it is." I conceded.

"What you up to?" he asked.

I had no reasonable reply to that. "I don't know." I told him honestly.

His brown furrowed. "You mind if I sit with you for a bit?"

I shrugged. "No. Go ahead."

I leaned back again and waited for him to say something. He looked like it (whatever it was that he wanted to say) was on the tip of his tongue. His forehead stayed wrinkled. He looked confused. I couldn't blame.

"You live on campus?" he questioned.

I shook my head.

"What classes did you have today?"

"None." I told him, folding my hands and twiddling my thumbs. I was getting kind of tired and Edward wasn't helping me to stay awake.

"You know, you're kind of a mystery."

I smiled. I liked the idea of mystery. I liked mysteries. It would be wonderful to become one.

He smiled back at me, then resumed his questioning. I got the feeling this was how our relationship was going to go.

Relationship? Did we have a relationship? I wasn't even sure if we were friends.

"What's your full name, Bella?"

I raised a brow at him. Seriously? "Isabella. That's not too mysterious."

"No. Your full name."

I sighed and rolled my eyes at him playfully. "Isabella Marie Dwyer-Swan."

"Dwyer-Swan?" Edward responded, now raising his brow. I liked the way he smirked at me-half cocky, half attentive.

"My mom, Rennee...she was one of those progressive mothers. Dwyer was her maiden name. She hyphenated mine. I guess she gave up on that whole idea by the time she had my sister because she's just a Swan." I huffed. "Anyway, it's really complicated when I try to fill out any sort of official documents. They either mess up my name or they file it someplace no one can find it. Also, people ask me about it alot. So, usually, I just go with Swan."

Edward nodded. "Isabella Marie Swan, then." He paused, thinking. I liked the little crease that formed between his eyes, the way they fixed on me. Not that that mattered. I barely even knew him. "I like it."

We talked for a long time. It wasn't until a librarian came over the intercom and announced that the library was closing that I realized how late it was.

"Um...I guess I gotta go then." I said, standing and throwing my bag over my shoulder.

Edward shook his head in affirmation. "Are you driving home this late?"

"Yep." I responded quickly, popping the 'p.' I yawned against my will, making Edward tilt his head to the side for a moment before inhaling slowly. He looked tense.

"Look, I'm not trying to proposition you or anything, I swear to God, but I have an apartment on the Canal and a very available spot on my sofa. You could stay there if you want. There's no sense in you driving all the way home just to come back in a few hours."

I didn't know what to say. I felt frozen. Was he inviting me to stay the night? Yes, he clearly was. I couldn't do that. I barely knew him. What if he was a creep? But something inside me kept telling me to ignore all of that logic. If I was being honest, I thought he was adorable. I loved the way his messy hair fell in his eyes, the line of his jaw, the way he carried himself. He made me feel...I didn't know. Excited. But I couldn't take him up on his offer. That would be insane.

"I don't think I should." I told him, starting towards the staircase.

I scurried down but he was hot on my heals.

"Can I at least walk you to your car? It's really late. You shouldn't be walking around alone this late on campus."

I shrugged (my go-to form of non-verbal communication) and allowed him to follow me. I really was very tired. I didn't think I could make it back to my mother's apartment but there was no way I was staying the night with Edward.

We walked side by side in the darkness and I wondered why he was being so nice to me. I decided the only reasonable explanation was that he wanted to sleep with me. That made the most sense. He'd come up to talk to me, chose me as his lab partner and now had invited me to sleep over at his apartment. He had told me that he wasn't propositioning me, but I wasn't so sure about that. I didn't really believe that anyone did anything withut having some ulterior motive. I was sure Edward was no exception to this rule.

When we got back to my car, I told him thank you and that I would see him later-if not the next morning, on Monday in lab. He said 'alright' and I told him goodbye.

"It was great talking to you." he said, smiling that crooked smile that made my stomach flip.

"Ditto." I grinned.

I got in my car and started the engine. Edward walked back the way we had come. I waited until he was out of sight before turning the key in the ignition, locking my doors and climbing in the back seat to sleep.

I changed my clothes in my car the next morning and walked across the street to class. I sat near the back and to left side of the auditorium this time, giving up all hope of making it through the semester in the front row. I watched a group of three guys I recognized from lab take up our old seats. The lecture hall filled up promptly at 8:45 as it always did and Rose and Alice shuffled in at five minutes past nine. I couldn't help looking for Edward. I thought he might sit with me again, but there was no sign of him anywhere. I couldn't keep my eyes on the power point slides. I could have sworn I could feel him in the room somewhere, but he hadn't come over to talk to me.

I told myself I was being ridiculous. Why was I letting a boy get to me like this. I glued my eyes to the board in front of me.

Alice and Rose kept whispering beside me, talking about some guy who had asked Rose to homecoming. Apparently he was tall, dark and hunky and she planned to go back to his dorm with him on Saturday, and I quote "roomates be damned." Alice told her they should get an apartment near campus for just such purposes. Meeting new people would be easier if they were closer to the action,

I kept thinking about Edward. I wondered what he had meant by asking me to stay at his place. What had his actual intentions? I knew it was ridiculously childish to entertain any notion of him doing such a thing out of the goodness of his heart. He must have thought he was getting something out of it. I thought too hard and my brain started to hurt. Maybe I wouldn't have minded his ulterior motives, but the idea that he was only talking to me in the hopes of taking me for "a roll in the hay" made me bizarrely sad.

I couldn't take notes but I couldn't sketch either. I couldn't do anything but think about last night and what he might have meant. _What the hell has Edward Cullen done to me?_


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight...however I do love feedback so reviews pretty, pretty please.

I didn't dream at all over the weekend...only because I didn't sleep. I felt abnormally keyed up and, what was usually a good four or five hours a night became a fifteen-minute cat nap here and there. By Monday morning, my eyes were noticibly swollen and bloodshot. I looked pale, with dark circles to give me that 90's Calvin Kline druggy model feel. I sighed loundly as I gazed at the girl in the mirror. Was I starting to look older? I was only nineteen.

I combed my fingers through my hair, as I usually did. It was wavy and I looked as though I would fit right in with Indy's homeless but I decided it wasn't worth the effort. Who was even looking? No one. Though this thought made me breifly wonder if, maybe, Edward was. I shook that idea off quickly. He was just my lab partner. So what if he was a bit of a flirt. I probably wasn't the only girl he'd asked back to his apartment.

After brushing my teeth, I decided to forgo the makeup and headed back to my room to get dressed. I could hear Renee snoring from behind her bedroom door. She wouldn't be awake for hours and, most likely, by the time I got home tonight would already have gone back to bed. Since starting college, I had seen less and less of my mother. I was out all the time and she was becoming increasingly reclussive. Sometimes, I would find empty bottles of wine in the back of the fridge or a few old beer cans in the bathroom garbage. I wondered if she was okay, if she was keeping things from me but I couldn't bring myself to say anything. Renee never had taken well to conflict and I was pretty sure any sort of argument with me would send her on one of her very depresssing and very persistant guilt trips. Nobody wanted that.

I slipped on the only pair of jeans I owned: loose, ripped-up, paintstained denim. They were soft and comfortable and I'd been wearing the same pair since I bought them at a garage sale four years ago. Today was a no-caring kind of day so I snatched my favorite multicolored smock-like shirt off the top of a pile on my closet floor and muttered 'good enough' as I pulled it over my head. I decided that this was the Year of Sloppy: sloppy jeans, sloppy shirt, sloppy pony tail.

When I walked into the kitchen to grab my bag, Bree was already there waiting for me with a cup of coffee and a bowl of Lucky Charms. When did my baby sister start drinking coffee? I knew I wasn't home enough. Mom wasn't very capable of taking care of Bree, which made me feel responsible. She was only thirteen but she seemed so much older.

"What's shakin', kiddo?" I asked, smiling a little and grabbing the mug of black coffee out of her hand.

"Hey!" she cried in protest. "I was drinking that."

"You know..." I said, taking a large gulp from the mug. "This stuff is really bad for you."

The irony was not lost on me.

Bree just rolled her eyes and went over to the coffee machine to pour herself another cup. She always had been stubborn, a lot like me. I hoped she wasn't too much like me.

We finished our breakfast in silence. When we were both done, I collected our dishes and washed them in the sink before wrapping my arm around Bree's shoulder and kissing her breifly on the cheek.

When the door to our apartment shut behind me, I felt the air thin out. Home was always such a hard place to be. There was a reason I tried to keep myself busy.

The parking lot was full. Everyone was still sleeping and everything was frozen and covered in a thin layer of ice. This was the coldest winter in years and I'd about had it with Indiana weather. I pulled hard on my door handle, expecting it to stick and finding it completely frozen still. I yanked and yanked but the door just wouldn't come open. I shivered. My coat was still lying in the passenger seat.

After pressing the trunk button on my keyes, I found myself crawling inside, punching the backseat down and wiggling my way through. I hit a few elbows and knees in the process but was mostly fine, though I expected a bruise or two the next morning.

Driving to campus was as long and as boring as usual and when I finally got the lecture I found that, once again, Edward was nowhere to be found. I guessed he was big on playing hooky, though there was always a chance that I was simply missing him. In a class of three-hundred that isn't hard to do. But he definitely wasn't seeking me out and so I decided to let it go. What, was I going to indulge some ridiculous school girl crush? And even if he did want to see me as much as I wanted to see him, where did that lead? Nowhere. I was not the relationship kind of girl.

No. I was the single kind of girl.

Lunch came and went. Rose told me all about homecoming and Tall-dark-and-hunky. She'd slept with him, of course, and very proudly regailed us with the painfully detailed tail. When I scrunched up my nose in the midst of a particularly graphic portion of the retelling, Rose complained that if I ever got some I woudn't be so disgusted. I shrugged it off with a chuckle and a nod, but it bothered me.

I thought about it after lunch in the library while the girls worked on some math assignment on the computer. I was a virgin and my virginity was the bane of my existence. It wasn't that I had never been attracted to a guy before or even that no one had ever asked. I was a reasonably attractive girl. I'd had my fair share of opportunities. But, for some reason, I always clammed up. The previous summer, I'd had a fling with a guy I worked with named Jacob. We'd had a lot of fun, even messed around a lot, but when he tried to seal the deal I just panicked. We didn't speak after that and it had cut me deep.

At the crux of it all, I simply didn't feel very sexual. Like I said, I was reasonably attractive, but there was a difference between being cute and being sexy. More importantly, there was a definite divide between me and _feeling _sexy. I didn't see myself that way and the more I thought about it, the more distant the notion of sex in the near future seemed. Maybe it wasn't for me. Did sex have to be for everybody? What if it just never happened?

Alice cleared her throat loudly, bringing me back to reality.

"Bella, we've gotta go. It's alomost time for lab."

Shaking off the heavy topic of my unwanted purity, I nodded and got to my feet, gathering up my things. "Ya, sorry. I spaced out there for a little bit."

"Ya. You were pretty comatose." Alice laughed. "I was talking to you for like ten minuted before I realized you weren't really listening."

I blushed. Now I felt bad. "I'm really sorry, Al. I didn't mean to."

"She's probably thinking about fucking Edward." Rose blurte out and I blushed an even deeper shade of red. It felt like all of my blood had concentrated in my head.

"Oh my God, Rosalie, I was not!"

I was mortified, but she just laughed.

"Asshole." I muttered.

"But you love me." was her only reply.

When we got to lab, I saw that Edward wasn't there yet which really wasn't too much of a surprise. I set my things down and walked down the hall to the bathroom. When I met my own eyes in the mirror I breathed in deeply. Had I really thought this outfit was a good idea? I looked like a very small, very flat-chested bohemian which I guess I kind of was. I applied a little lipgloss, just because it made me feel a little like I'd tried.

When I rounded the corner into the hall, I ran into something hard. When I looked up, I saw that it was, of course, none other but Edward.

"Hey, you should be more careful or I'm gonna have to sue you for damages." he laughed, but I wasn't laughing with him.

My life was a cliche and embarrassing re-enactment of a bad teen movie and I was the star-the awkward, nerdy, starry-eyed main character.

"Sorry."

Good recovery, Bella.

"I guess I'll see you in a minute." Edward offered and I nodded, slipping past him and walking quickly away.

I plopped down in my chair feeling a little warm. I hoped to God I wasn't as bright red as I felt. If I was, I didn't want to know. I reached for my bag, popping a few alium into my mouth and praying that they'd take effect in the next two minutes. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

I took a deep breath to regain a grip on my cool, struggling to swallow back my nerves. With the knowledge that Edward had invited me to sleep in his apartment, regardless of his intentions, I now felt weird around him, like there was some sort of secret between us. Was it because I really liked the idea of sleeping with him? Or was it that I felt uncomfortable with the notion that he was just trying to get in my pants? Either way, it was awkward.

When he sat down next to me, I didn't look at him. Instead I fixed my eyes on the TA and patiently awaited instruction. Once we started going through the lab, I tried to listen but found that I couldn't concentrate. My mind was racing. When was my damn Valium going to kick in. I briefly contemplated taking a second dose but stopped myself for fear of overdosing. That would be a whole new kind of humiliation.

When the instruction was done, the room filled with buzzing as people divied up tasks between partners. I turned to Edward and found him already looking at me, that Hallmark half-grin plastered on his face. I offered to grab our supplies and quickly flitted away. I was beginning to feel a bit airy, which meant my pills were working.

"Got everything, partner?" he asked as I sat back down, laying several test tubes on the table along with a few petri dishes.

"Yep." I nodded.

There was a moment of silence as we measured out portions with the pipettes before Edward broke the silence.

"You're kinda quiet, huh?"

"Sometimes." I conceded, not altering my demeanor.

"I like talking with you though."

"Do you now?" I quaestion, arching one brow.

"Ya, it makes my time here more interesting."

I nodded. "Whatya want to talk about?"

"I don't know."

I smirked. "You hadn't thought about that?"

He smirked back. "No...I was thinking though, I have a few friends in this class that I sit with and you always sit with those two girls...maybe we should merge our groups."

I nodded again. "Sure. That would be alright. We could take up a whole row."

He laughed a little. "Where do you sit?"

I paused, trying to think of a good way to give lecture hall directions. "Well...like if you're looking from the front...it's like..."

"Okay, so maybe I already know where you sit."

I raised my brow again. "What?"

"I may have been looking for you..."

"Oh. If you knew where I sit why did you ask?"

Edward was quiet for a moment, seemingly debating what he should say, before answering. "I guess I didn't want you to think I was like spying on you. It's kind of awkward walking into a three-hundred student lecture and having to wander around the aisles looking for a girl you barely know. And probably kind of weird to just sit down next to her and make her endure your presence three times a week." He winked at me and my heart skipped.

"You're right." I admitted, my tone somber. "You are super rape-y. I don't think I want you as my lab partner anymore. In fact, I might have to report you...for sexual harassment." I choked back a laugh but, on the inside, I was mortified. Sexual harrassment? It was a bad joke, but Edward seemed to think it was funny.

He shrugged, looking down at his work and then back up to me. "Well, then I guess asking you to work on our group assignment after class would be out of line then, wouldn't it?"

"Oh, yes. Real far out of line." I furrowed my brow in mock disapproval.

Edward hesitated, that same expression on his face as though he was about to say something but wasn't sure if he should or not. He inhaled, looking me straight in the eye, lips pursed.

"So...walk to the library with me after lab?"

I didn't think before I responded with a quick shake of my head and a "sure."

We were quiet for the rest of the class.

At six, I packed up my things and Edward packed up his. I told Alice and Rose that I'd see them later. They gave me funny looks, I'm sure expecting some sort of explanation but I said nothing. I wasn't in the mood for any of Rose's humor. Yet the image in my mind of their surprised expression when they saw me leaving with Edward made me grin. It was truly priceless.

It wasn't like me to spend time with anyone other than the girls outside of class. But Edward was the exception to that rule. And as we walked side by side against the cold winter breeze, I wondered if maybe he was the exception to every rule I'd ever had. Every few steps, I found myself glancing at him sideways only to find him looking straight at me, that same thoughtful expression on his face. I smiled a little. I felt like giggling but, thankfully, stopped myself.

The library was almost uncomfortably warm but I welcomed it. I felt like I had wind burn from all of the walking I'd been doing. We called the elevator and waited quietly for the doors to open. When they did, it was packed with people as usual and I found us squishing in. I ended up with my back pressed against him, too close for me to feel at ease. I heard him clear his throat and idly wonder if he felt as illogically nervous as I did. When the doors opened on the fourth floor, I exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

We found an open computer at a desk near the back and I dropped my things to the ground beside it. Edward sat down next to me, pulled out the rubric and opened up a word document. We started going through the instructions, Edward typing out (or attempting to type out) the information we collected during our last lab. After a few minutes of typing and re-typing, I decided enough was enough.

"How about you dictate this to me." I offered and he laughed.

"That might not be a bad idea."

We switched seats and began I the process of correcting Edward's numerous typos.

"So, where'd you get those fabulous typing skills?"

"Ha. Just comes naturally, I guess."

"Ya, that extra thumb sure is something."

He laughed again and I could feel him looking at me.

"So...um, how's do find higher education thus far?"

I threw him a sideways glance, noticing the way his lips tugged up at one corner. He was trying to make small-talk with me and I appreciated it. I hated awkward silence as much as anybody, probably more so due to the fact that, when it came to talking with new people, I was not a very good conversationalist.

"I love it, actually."

"Make a lot of friends?"

I shrugged. "A few. Mostly just acquaintances though. I'm pretty close with Rose and Alice, I guess."

"Were you very popular in high school."

Again, I shrugged. "I had friends, mostly guys though. My friend Jak sort of brought me into his group...which was nice. But being friends with the girls is definitely different."

"Different, huh?" he asked with a mischievious glint in his eye.

"Yeah, well, girls are different. They're...a lot more complicated. I think I'd prefer to have mostly male friends. Less trouble."

"Really?" Edward challenged. I never stopped typing.

"Sure."

"Doesn't the whole 'sex' thing get in the way?"

I gasped, suddenly offended. "I did not sleep with any of my friends!"

Edward chuckled. "I wasn't saying that. But you've heard that song, right? How does it go? 'You and me. baby, ain't nothing but mammals'?"

I shook my head vehemently. "So what? Men and women can't be friends now?"

Edward shrugged.

"Huh." I sneered, typing just a little bit faster. For some reason, his admission had really pissed me off. "I think that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Do you just want to fuck every woman you come in contact with."

"That's not what-" But I didn't let him finish.

"Like adult people just have absolutely no control over their acrions, like were all humping each other because it's instinct."

"I think you mistoo-"

"No, I get it. I just think it's moronic."

Edward pursed his lips and nodded, recognizing that he'd been beat. I had successfully shot down the conversation without much of an exchange. But, now, I was sure more than ever that Edward was only interested in me for sex. I needed to remove myself from the situation before my little schoolgirl crush went to far.

"Look," he began. "I didn't mean to offend you, Bella."

I wanted to smile when he said my name but I didn't. Instead, I just nodded. "It's fine. Don't mix business with pleasure, right?"

"That's a very blunt way of putting it..."

"Blunt is good. It gets straight to the point."

I could practically feel him smirking at me. "That it does. And so do you."

Shrugging my typical shrug, I told him "I value directness."

"I'll mark that down in my notes."

I finished our short dictation and printed out two copies, handing one to Edward and stowing the other away in my Biology folder. I said my goodbyes, resolving myself to take Edwards own advice. I didn't need any sort of trouble in my life and Edward seemed to supply plenty of it. I would see him as a classmate and nothing more. I would not admire his pretty green eyes or messy auburn hair. I would ignore all of that and focus on passing my lab.

"Thanks for working with me, Edward...kind of." I laughed. He hadn't participated much.

"Well, any time you need someone to keep you company..."

"Sure." I said, but I didn't really mean it.

"See you around?"

I only nodded.

Edward pursed his lips thoughtfully as he looked at me, head tilted to one side, eyes fixed intently on mine. "Would you like to have dinner with me?"

My heart nearly stopped. I didn't know what to say. He'd taken me by surprise. Why would he put me on the spot like that? I had to give him points for guts yet, in the meantime, my breath had caught in my chest.

"I'm sorry." I muttered. "I have to go."

And with that, I got up, slung my bag over my shoulder and walked away.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. So glad to have gotten some feedback on these first four chapters. Please keep it coming! :) Trying to update more often.

I walked straight to my car from the library that night. I popped a few more Valiums (admittedly one more than was prescribed) and waited impatiently for them to take effect. I didn't like the way Edward seemed to have a knack for rustling my tail feathers. Maybe I'd overreacted. Maybe I'd been too harsh. I didn't know. He'd just caught me off guard. I'd panicked.

I saw Edward at lunch the next day but he didn't say anything to me. I told myself that maybe he hadn't seen me, but I was pretty sure he had. Ordinarily, I would have asked Alice what she thought about it all but it just seemed too awkward. She would think I was being silly and overly cautious and maybe I was. I had never been a very trusting person. I couldn't help that.

Before her diagnosis, my widowed mother had paraded a nearly unending slew of men in and out of our lives, all of which had been equally big losers. There was Ted who'd ditched town with a thousand dollars out of my mom's savings account, Brady who she'd caught sleeping with the twenty-three-year-old college intern at his law firm, Larry (a married used car salesman) and Brandon who was only nine years older than me, just to name a few. Her most recent escapade had included a torrid affair with our family physician. Needless to say, I'd started getting my flu shots at CVS and skipping yearly checkups all together. For whatever reason, most of Renee's relationships seemed to end the same way. They would get tired of each other and would then moe on to different people. It was an endless cycle and something that I didn't really want for myself. I couldn't stand the idea of watching people come and go from my life like that. Watching her do it had been hard enough.

So, romance had never seemed too glamourous. I wasn't sure I really wanted to fall in love or get married. I wasn't even sure if I believed in that kind of love. A boyfriend was the last thing on my mind, right next to any sort of realistic prospect of having sex any time soon. But I didn't want Edward to think that I didn't like him, or that I was unwilling to be friendly. Of course, I wanted us to be cordial. We were lab partners.

On Wednesday, I looked for him in lecture. I waited by the entrance for a long time before it occurred to me that he probably wasn't coming. Was it because he didn't want to feel like he had to sit with me and the girls after bringing it up on Monday? I didn't know. A few minutes later, Rose and Alice found me and dragged me to our usual spot in lecture hall. People kept filing in and I kept watching. If I was being totally honest, I would say that I felt a bit disappointed every time I saw that whoever had wandered in was not Edward. Fortunately, I had never been very honest with myself.

"Who are you looking for?" Alice asked me, leaning in close and whispering under her breath.

"No one." I answered quickly.

She shurgged and turned her attention back to the professor.

There were only fifteen minutes of class left at this point and I had traded my listening ears for a pencil and a sketch pad. When I heard the door at the back of the hall open, I figured it was probably just someone going to use the bathroom or cutting out early, but I had to look. When I turned around, I was surprised to find Edward sitting at the back in one of the chairs closest to the exit, backpack still slung over his shoulder, seemingly intently listening to whatever it was that the professor was saying. I decided that I would go and apologize to him for leaving so abruptly the other night. It was better to smooth things over, I thought, than to hold a grudge or maintain whatever suspicions I had about him.

I tapped my pencil impatiently beside the sketch I had been working on and noticed Alice looking at me sideways, as though she had just heard a secret of mine that I didn't want her to know. I turned to her, rolled my eyes, and proceeded to ignore her curious glances. Those fifteen minutes seemed to be dragging on forever. I couldn't wait for the professor to dismiss us.

"Alrighty then..." he finally anounced at the end of a very long lecture on microbiology. "There will me a practice test in class on Friday so bring your clickers and your notes. This is open book so you will be able to look things up. It's just an exercise to test yourself on what you know." I heard the door squeak open but the professor was looking right at me and I didn't want him to think I wasn't paying attention. "Other than that, we're all done here. Have a good week, everybody!"

I stood quickly, bag already in hand, and told the girls I would meet them in the cafeteria for lunch. They nodded knowingly and I rolled my eyes again, smoothing out the skirt of my dress and walking away. Edward was already gone but I hoped to find him nearby. I look down the hall both ways, searching the growing crowd for thick, messy auburn hair and there he was, quite a distance away from me and headed back towards the canal.

"Edward!" I called but he didn't seem to hear me. I ran to catch up with him, feeling a familiar burn in my lungs a bit sooner than I would hae liked. "Edward! Edward, wait up!"

When I caught him, I was huffing. I worked for a moment to catch my breath. Edward didn't stop walking, only let me fall in step beside him. Was he mad at me? I hoped not.

"What do you need, Bella?"

He was _so_ mad at me.

"I, um..." I breathed in deep, making one more attempt at regaining my composure. Was it the running than had taken my breath away or the anxiety settling in my gut. I wanted another Valium, but Edward didn't need to see that. "I wanted to apologize for jumping down your throat the other day. I mean, I still don't agree with you..." _Way to stick your foot in your mouth, Bella. _"But I shouldn't have freaked out on you like that, so..."

"Yeah, it's okay. I was being a jerk. I get it. I'm sorry I put you on the spot like that, too. I realize, in context, it probably seemed like I was saying..."

"Saying what?" I urged?

"Like I was asking you out. I didn't mean it that way."

For some reason, this clarfication made my breath catch.

"We can be friends, Bella. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable. I'm not the best with words sometimes."

I nodded. "I understand. I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry I went off on you. I wasn't right about that."

Edward nodded in return. "Good. Well, I gotta go but...see you around?"

"Sure, sure. See you around."

I stopped in my tracks and Edward kept on walking. He'd told me that everything was fine, that I hadn't upster him. But if that was the truth, then why did I feel so unsteady, like something negative had just transpired between us. Our conversation had felt more like a face off than words between friends and for the first time since we'd met, I started to question whether or not I really wanted to be _just_ Edward's friend.

Brushing it off, I decided it didn't matter. I was no good for him. I had too many secrets, too much baggage.

Which reminded me...

Today was therapy day. I had an appointment with the Good Doctor at one o'clock which meant I would be rushing back and forth between here and Carslisle's office. I could hardly wait.

About an hour later, I found myself sitting in the parking lot of the Good Doctor's priate practice, about twenty minutes down the road from where I had lab at three. My appointment was supposed to have started fifteen minutes ago but, for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to get out of the car. I didn't know what I was waiting for but nothing seemed right. The sky was darker than usual. My car heater didn't seem to be able to keep up with the cold and I felt hopelessly confused. Why was this thing with Edward bothering me so much? I barely even knew him. He was just some guy that I'd barely spent any time with. The semester would end and I'd probably never see him again. We would go our seperate ways and I would forget all about him, and him me. So what was the problem? Why had my heart skipped a beat when he told me, not in so many words, that he wasn't interested?

I closed my eyes and listened to the cars flying past me on the nearby expressway. I imagined them headed somewhere far away from here, leaving this town behind in their rearview mirrors on their way to bigger and better things and suddenly I wished I was them. I wished I could just start my car and go, never to look back again. I could disappear. No one would know what had happened to me and, breifly, I wondered how many people would really notice I was gone. How many days would my mom sit in her room before she realized I hadn't ever come home?

I turned over the engine and thought long and hard. It was too late to go and talk to the Good Doctor about all this. The whole institution of talk therapy had never seemed very cathartic to me. Yet I didn't feel like going back to school either. I couldn't face Rose and Alice and their questioning stares or Edward and his witty banter with me. I couldn't face the glaringly obvious truth: that I was not like everybody else. I reached into my bag and dumped the entire bottle of Valium out into the palm of my hand. For a long time, I just stared at them. It seemed like hours before I snapped out of it.

Tossing the pills back into their bottle, I stuffed them deep in my bag and flung open the door. I was crying, I realized, as I walked through the doors of the sparsely decorated office. I didn't wait to be recieved by the receptionist or invited through the doors to the back, simply pushed on through, all the way back to the Good Doctor's office where I found him sitting at his desk as usual, patiently awaiting my arrival. I was late often.

"Hey, Doc." I said, plopping down in the chair across from him. I only had thirty minutes left. I was determined to make the most of it.

We talked a bit longer than usual and I cried a bit more than usual. I told him about the boy in my class and my mother and sister and he listened.

"So...do you feel that you've lost control of your anxiety disorder, Isabella?"

I hated it when he called me that.

I shrugged. "I feel...I can't even describe how I feel. It's like I'm nervous all the time, but it's more than that. I feel confused and...lost. Like I can't stop moving but I have nowhere to go."

"And how has your medication been affecting you? Any side effects? Complaints?"

Dr. Cullen had been considering a dosage increase for several months. He thought maybe I was buiding up an immunity. We had talked about discontinuing the meds all together but that hadn't gone very well the last time I'd tried. My anxiety was getting worse and, to a certain extent, I didn't think either the Good Doctor or myself quite knew what to do about it.

I left the office than day with a new Valium prescription: 10mg tablets taken four times a day. It wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for, but maybe it was something.

After stopping by the pharmacy, I headed home in the snow, a little less than thrilled with the way my life seemed to be turning out.


	6. Chapter 6

We Were Born To Die

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

As usual, I didn't have class on Thursday. It was going to be a very long day spent at home and I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. My mother didn't work anymore; she was on a fixed income which meant we'd probably be spending most of the next twenty-four hours alone together. I woke up early which was the norm but just stayed in bed for a while. I got up around eight-thirty and went to turn on the shower. The apartment was cold as usual and I shivered as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I stopped to look closer.

I had never been a very vain person. I was fairly thin and pale with eyes and hair that were equally dark. My features were soft and feminine-a pair of full lips and a small, slightly curved nose. But there was something in my eyes, something in the way I held myself that just didn't seem right. Straightening up, I tried to smile, tried to push my shoulders back and look proud.

I could be proud, couldn't I?

I could be brave.

I sighed, letting my chest fall.

Why couldn't I be brave?

I stripped out of my night clothes and stepped into the shower. The water was too hot and it scalded my skin, though I didn't mind. It felt nice, woke me up, made me feel alert.

I hated days when there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. Activity was something I could use to channel my anxiety**.** I made a mental list of everything I needed to get done: my paper for English, the review sheets for algebra, my bio homework...

Ugh, bio.

The thought of ever walking through the doors of the lab building ever again made me cringe. After our conversation yesterday, I was pretty sure that Edward couldn't stand me. I had pushed my luck way too far and now he thought I was a bitch. I had sat up all last night thinking about the situation I had created with Edward. I didn't even know anything about him. I couldn't even remember his full name. We hadn't really talked about much of anything, such as our majors, where we were from or what we hoped to do with ourselves when college was over. There was no reason for his obvious shortness yesterday to bother me, but it did. For whatever reason, I wanted him to like me. And for some reason, that felt like a humongous problem.

I turned off the shower and stepped out, brushed through my hair and headed back to my room to get dressed. It felt like a jeans and sweatshirt kind of day so I threw on the first ripped up denim object I saw along with my favorite blue sweater.

It only took about three cups of coffee for my mother to wonder into the kitchen. She looked a lot like me, but a lot older. In the past year, she'd lost some weight due to her illness, and the crow's feet at the corners of her beautiful, blue eyes (the one trait of hers I had unfortunately not inherited) had deepened.

"Good morning." she mumbled.

I nodded.

Renee made her way to the fridge and poured half a glass of orange juice, followed by another half-glass of vodka from the top shelf of the pantry. I didn't say anything because I knew I couldn't. I knew what would happen if I did. She would cry and storm off to her bedroom and I wouldn't see her for the rest of the day, not that I particularly wanted to spend much quality time with Renee. She never said much and, as a result, I usually found myself tongue tied whenever we were alone together.

She sat down at the table across from me and stared at me silently. Head tilted slightly to the side, I watched her watch me. Renee sighed, took a sip of her drink and then tilted her head the opposite way, seemingly pondering something of paramount importance. She looked hopelessly lost.

"What?" I asked, perplexed by her actions.

She groaned. "Why are you here, Bella?"

I raised a brow at her. "Um...I live here."

She rolled her eyes in return. "I know that. I mean, why aren't you at school?"

"I don't have class on Thursdays."

"Oh. Is that so?" she asked, sipping on her drink some more.

I nodded and waited in silence for her to say something more.

She didn't.

"So, is there anything you need to do today?" I questioned, hoping she might send me off on some errand.

Renee pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

I have to admit, she caught me by surprise.

"No." I replied quickly. "Why the sudden interest?"

"Why not?"

"Because...I don't want one?" My response was more of a question than an actual answer.

"Why?"

I honestly didn't know what to say to that. "It's just...it doesn't fit me."

Renee nodded and threw back the rest of her screwdriver. "Are you screwing around then?" She got up and poured herself another drink.

Again, I quickly answered, "No."

"You gay?"

"Oh, my God! No, I'm not gay! And what's with the third degree?"

Renee plopped back down in the seat across from me and pursed her lips again, doing that same sympathetic head-tilt as before. "I'm just trying to get you. Do you go out? Go to college parties?"

I shrugged. "Not really. So?"

"Well, when I was your age..."

When she was my age, she got pregnant with me. I couldn't help the thought from slipping into my mind**.** My parents had met one fateful night at a frat party and I'd arrived a short, nine months later.

"I don't want to talk about this, Renee."

"No, damn it! I'm your mother. You can talk to me."

"I don't want to talk to you about whether or not I'm hooking up with guys!"

She huffed. "Why? I get it, I can relate. You're young, attractive, unattached. I was young once. I can handle it."

I stood up and put my coffee cup in the sink, banging it down on the porcelain a little harder than necessary. "I seriously have nothing to say to you about this."

I turned around and watched Renee polish off her second, supersized screwdriver of the morning. I noticed the bags under her eyes and briefly wondered if she'd gone to bed at all last night. But this was about something else. This was about Renee and her obvious confusion regarding the topic of my celibacy.

"I just think you should be out having fun, Bella. Everyone has their time. I had mine; Bree will have hers, and what about you? I have to sit here and watch you mope around this house all day reading a fucking biology textbook?"

_Biology._ I cringed.

"So?" I retorted. I'd always been terrible at arguing with my mother. How was this even an argument?

Like always, the conversation came around to the big elephant in the room: the real reason my lack of social success bothered my mother.

"I'm dying, Bella!" she screamed and I jumped a little. I hated it when she cried. "Do you know what I get to do today? I get to go to the hospital and get my tests done so they can tell me how long before my kidney kicks the bucket. And you just sit here!" she sneered, disgusted. "It's fucking depressing, Bella. I can't even watch you. It's like living with...your _father._"

Well, that one really hurt.

It was no secret that Charlie and Renee were not soul mates. LikeI said before, I was the result of a one-night-stand gone awry. Sure, they had loved each other in their own way, but my mother hadn'tkept her general distaste for my father's habits a secret. He was too sensitive, too emotional, too weak.

Like me.

I didn't wait to hear any more. I got up, slung my bag over my shoulder and headed out the door. Before I knew it, I was out driving again, wondering aimlessly and crying into the silence of my car. There was no one to hear but me, so I let it all go. I didn't know where I was going; somewhere more comfortable, I told myself. But the truth was that there really wasn't any place like that for me. I felt almost homeless, so I went the only place I knew no one would bother me: school.

I didn't know very many people on campus. Aside from Rose and Alice and, as of most recently, Edward, I was pretty much a ghost there. I went to class and I came home. Simple as that. But every once in a while, when I wanted to feel really alone, I would go down to the library basement and hide in the back, behind the microfiche. It was quiet and isolated.

Safe.

I found myself there again, huddled in the back corner, my head buried in my knees. I couldn't stop crying. My valium was all but useless now. Unfortunately, drugs just couldn't fix some things. I knew that. I also knew that I was not going home tonight.

It was hours before I got myself together. However, even after I stopped crying, I couldn't bring myself to leave. Instead, I retrieved my old copy of Robin Hood from my bag and sat there reading in the back corner of the basement until the day had come and gone. I was hungry, exhausted and embarrassed. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I get a grip?

When I checked my phone around ten o'clock that evening, I decided to draw the line at falling asleep in the library twice in two weeks. Instead, I gathered up my things and made the considerable trek back to my truck. I turned over the engine and cranked the heat before crawling into the backseat and going to sleep. How had I been reduced to this? As I pondered the reality that sleeping in my car could become a regular practice, I heard a knock on my window.

I let out a little scream, but not a very loud one as my breath quickly caught in my throat. The windows were a little clouded and I had to wipe away the fog to see the person on the other side of the glass.

I could have died right there.

"Edward?" I asked, more than humiliated at this point.

There were not words.

I rolled down the window and clutched my jacket close around my body. "Edward, what are you doing here?"

His eyebrows shot skyward. "What _am I_ doing here? Bella, why the hell are you sleeping in your car?"

I didn't really have a good answer for that. "Well, I...I mean, um..."

"Just tell me the truth. Are you homeless?"

Irrationally, I was offended by his question. "NO!"

"Then why are you sleeping in your car, Bella?"

I considered my response for a moment before coming to the conclusion that I was fighting a losing battle. "Right now I just can't be at home."

Edward was quiet for a moment, his lips pulled into a hard line as he looked at me. My stomach growled and I cursed it for calling me out once again. I really was the biggest idiot. But before I could say anything to break the awkward silence that had fallen between us, Edward nodded to himself, obviously making up his mind.

"Bella, get out of the car." he said sternly. He lookedmadagain and that made me angry.

"No."

"Bella. Please, just get out of the car."

I shook my head like a petulant child.

"I'm not kidding around here, Bella. Get out of the car."

"No," I told him stubbornly, jutting out my chin. I started to roll up the window, but Edward stopped me.

"You're not sleeping in your car, Bella."

"I'll do what I want."

However, he had already reached into the car and unlocked the door, pulling it open and me along with it.

I was steaming. I pulled away from him quickly, jerking my arm violently into my own chest. His expression seemed to soften then, but he still wouldn't leave me to myself.

"Bella, I'm begging you. Whatever the reason...please, just let me help you."

I looked at him warily.

"We're friends, Bella, aren't we? Let me help a friend."

I paused.

The way he looked at me, I believed for the first time since I met Edward that maybe he really was just trying to care about me. And, for some reason, I couldn't say no to him. I wasn't angry anymore, just embarrassed.

I hung my head, letting a few stray tears fall. I breathed in deeply and felt his hand coaxing me to look up at him. When I did, I felt incredibly vulnerable. If I could have crawled under a rock, I would have. No one, excluding the _good doctor_, had ever seen me like this.

Ever.

"Just come back to my apartment with me and let me at least give you something to eat or _something_. I swear to God, I am not making a pass at you...and I won't try anything. I just...I don't want you sleeping out here in your car. It's not right. You shouldn't be out here at night alone. Honestly, even if I could leave without feeling like an absolutely awful person, I would spend the rest of the night worrying about you."

I furrowed my brow and nodded, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand. "Okay," I told him. That was all I could say.

We walked a long way in the cold and Edward never said a word. He didn't ask why I couldn't go home or why I was crying, only led me up the steps to his apartment and held the door open for me to walk through. It was all verysweet until I realized exactly where I was.

When the door slammed shut behind me, I panicked.

Why in the world had I agreed to come back to his apartment? I looked around the room suddenly hyper-aware of everything around me. It was a small open-concept unit-a tiny kitchen, a couple of beanbags**,** a television and a bed. I was alone with Edward in his home late at night, and truthfully, I was too tired to turn around and go back home.

Edward took off his worn leather jacket and threw it on one of the beanbags, but I didn't follow suit. I already felt naked in the emotional sense. He'd seen me cry. The thought of what had just transpired a few minutes ago made me cringe.

"I don't have a lot. Mostly, I eat out but I think there're some leftovers in the fridge if you're hungry. I could make you a cup of coffee. Tea?"

"Tea?" I asked.

"Yeah, you want some?"

I shook my head, wandering farther into the clutter of his little apartment.

"Do you live here alone?" I asked half hoping that he had a roommate**.**

He shook his head, following me. "Yes, just me. A few friends and I were talking about pitching in to get a bigger place, but I like living alone. I mean, the guys are pretty gross, not great roomie material," he laughed and a grinned a little.

Suddenly, I heard my mother's voice. _You're just like your father._ I was too cautious and my own caution suffocated me. My mother was reckless and all this time she'd not been talking to me, she'd been wondering why I wasn't more like her. I wasn't sure if I could be reckless, but I could certainly be brave, couldn't I?

I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed it over the top of Edwards. He smiled at me some, running his hand anxiously over the skin at the nape of his neck. I wasn't the only one who was nervous.

"Listen, Bella, I'm really sorry if I came off as...back there, I wasn't trying to tell you what to do. I just don't want you to feel like you have to, like, sleep in your car. You shouldn't ever feel like you have to do that." He was rambling now and it made me smile just a bit wider. "I know I sort of blew you off yesterday when you came up to talk to me. I guess I just let my feelings get the better of me. I'm not going to say my ego wasn't a little...bruised. It was. But I'm a big boy." he chuckled. "I can get over it." I nodded, looking down at my hands, absently picking at my fingernails. "I do want to be your friend, Bella. I really do."

I felt his finger pulling my face upward again, forcing me to look him in the eye. He was so close and he seemed so sincere, and for a moment, I honestly did think about kissing him.

But I didn't.

"I'll crash on one of the bean bag chairs. Take the bed. Think of it as a favor between friends."

I shook my head. "I can't take your bed, Edward."

"No, it's fine. Honestly."

"No. I seriously can't let you sleep on a freaking bean bag chair." We both laughed a little at that statement before I forged on from there.

I could be brave.

"We can both sleep in the bed."

Now, it was Edward's turn to shake his head. "No, I don't mind sleepi-"

"People just _sleep_ in beds together all the time. It's no big deal. All we're doing is sleeping."

The debate seemed to be over before it had really begun. He smiled at me nervously as we shimmied under the covers, accidentally bumping arms and legs and feet. It was uncomfortable to say the least; I had never shared a bed with a boy before and my heart was pounding so loudly I worried he could hear it. It took us a while before we were settled, both turning away from each other, trying our best not to touch.

"Goodnight, Bella." he hummed.

And even though I doubted I would get much sleep that night, I murmured "Goodnight, Edward," back.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. Thank you for reading!

_It felt as though I was on fire. _

_Why was it so freaking hot in here? _

_I kept looking around (for what, I don't know) but finding nothing but blackness. There was nothing but the sound of someone breathing. _

_Was it me? _

_ It must be._

_ I tried to move and realized I was lying down. I rolled and hit something hard. That was where the heat was coming from. I thought that maybe, if I could open my eyes a little wider, I might be able to see . But my__body felt so heavy and every effort seemed to be counteracted by the crushing pressure of my own exhaustion. _

_I was in a fog and there was no getting out … not just yet._

_ I laid there still as a statue for a long time, and for once, I felt calm. There was nothing to see or do, no one I had to impress, no appearances to keep up. I was just me, entirely safe and whole, hypnotized by the even breaths echoing in my ears. _

_ In, out. In, out._

_ Then, suddenly, something tightened around me._

I was awake now, the peaceful nature of my lucid dream shattered as my consciousness cut through the cloud of sleep hanging over me. I opened my eyes and saw that I was not alone.

For a moment, I almost panicked.

Then, I remembered everything that had happened the night before.

"Oh, God." I said to myself. I could feel my cheeks heating.

I looked to my left and there was Edward in the bed beside me: shirtless, one arm wrapped around my waist, hair hopelessly disheveled and falling in his eyes. I could feel my heartbeat accelerating, but not necessarily in a bad way. I thought about reaching for my Valium until I remembered I had left my bagon his kitchen counter.

How could I get up without waking him?

What would I say when he did wake?

I had completely humiliated myself. I had no idea what Edward thought of me now, but I had no idea how it could be anything but bad. I couldn't lie to myself and I couldn't lie to him either.

I was a disaster.

My family was a disaster.

My entire _life _was one gigantic disaster.

I breathed in one, long shaky breath and slammed my eyes shut. Maybe, if I wished hard enough, it would all go away. Maybe, when I opened my eyes, I wouldn't be here in Edward's bed anymore, embarrassed and still wearing yesterday's clothes. I thought about the ripped, paint-stained jeans and baggy sweater I had left my house in yesterday and cringed. I realized that Edward might have asked me if I was homeless for more than one reason. Not only had he found me sleeping in my car; I also looked the part.

"Why me?" I mumbled to myself, refusing to open my eyes. Edward's face was just inches from mine. I could barely breathe.

"What?"

His voice was soft, but it made me jump. I felt like crying. It was all so mortifying.

"Um...nothing," I told him, hoping that would be the end of it.

I should have known I wouldn't be that lucky.

Edward didn't say anything for a long time. I thought he might move his arm from where it rested over my body, but he didn't. He held me, his head touching mine, our legs intertwined, for what felt like hours. Then, he took a deep breath, and without looking at me, asked the question I had been dreading all morning.

"So, what were you really doing out there in your car?"

I didn't say anything.

I didn't know what to say.

My mother was making me crazy? It sounded silly even just saying it in my head. Instead, I shrugged. "I just ... it's complicated."

I looked at him and found him looking right back at me, that familiar, pensive expression on his face: lips pursed, the skin crinkled between his eyes.

"You know, yesterday wasn't the first time I saw you sleeping in your car."

His admission hung in the silence and a state of frenzy ensued. How was I supposed to respond to that?

"What?"

_Yeah. That was really eloquent. _

"The morning after that night we talked in the library, I decided to walk down to the convenience store on New York Street to pick up some groceries. I mean, I thought you were long gone. But when I was cutting through the parking lot, I happened to walk past your car and ... well, there you were. I didn't want to say anything. I mean ... I thought that maybe ... it was probably none of my business so I didn't ask. But then, last night, I saw you sleeping in your car again."

I closed my eyes. I couldn't look at him. "Yeah." I conceded, waiting for him to continue.

"I know we don't know each other very well but ... I feel like ... connected to you in some way. I _do_ want to be your friend. I'm sorry I blew you off the other day, I really am. I shouldn't have done that. I guess I just got my feelings hurt. But what you _should_ know is this … If you're sleeping in your car because you feel as if you have nowhere else to go, that isn't true. You are welcome here anytime. But you are not welcome to sleep in your car, because first of all it isn't safe and secondly it's ridiculous."

I made eye contact with Edward once again, and this time, when I looked up, his eyes were blazing and his nostrils flared. He wasn't angry, per say, just passionate. I liked him this way, I decided. It suited him well.

I nodded. "I know it's ridiculous. It's just ... I don't know how to talk about this..."

"Bella," he began, one hand coming up to cup my cheek. "I think it's pretty obvious that you _need _to talk about it."

I sighed and turned my head away from his penetrating stare.

He was right, of course, but something stopped me. How could I explain this feeling inside me? It was as though I was being boiled from the inside out. I couldn't control it. It just was. The Good Doctor told me that my anxiety disorder was a combination of genetic and environmental risk factors. When he explained it to me, it all sounded so reasonable, almost as though its presence in my life made sense. But when that choking sensation rose in my throat, the entire world appeared to be without order. Everything closed in on me so tightly and I just couldn't ever seem to shake it.

There was something very wrong with me and it destroyed everything. So, I did what I seemed to have been doing a lot lately; I cried.

"I'm sorry." I mumble and duck my head down to bury it in Edward's chest. As if of their own accord, my hands moved to touch his skin. Normally, I would have been embarrassed but right now, I couldn't bring myself to care. He already knew too much for my liking. Why kill myself trying to sell him on a story that just wasn't the truth?

"Shh, shh..."

But I couldn't stop sobbing. "I just ... my mother ... I couldn't be at home last night."

Edward stilled. "Did she hurt you?"

I sighed. "Not exactly. It's... complicated."

I could feel him nod as he pulled me closer to him. I felt his hand cupping the back of my head, his fingers running through my most likely, wild hair. He held me until I could breathe again, and for a moment, I felt accomplished. For the first time in a long time, I had made it through one of my episodes without a single, little blue pill.

Around a quarter 'til ten, Edward reminded me that we had a lecture at ten-thirty and that we needed to get up if we planned on making it in time. I nodded and pulled away somewhat reluctantly. I knew that once we separated, whatever spell we were under would be broken. The comfort I felt with Edward would be nothing but a distant memory and I would probably regret everything. But I couldn't afford to miss the lecture.

Edward gave me a towel and directed me to the bathroom to shower. I locked the door behind me the second it shut and let the breath I'd been holding whoosh out of me. I'd slept in Edward's bed last night, right next to a half-naked, admittedly very attractive man. It was completely out of character for me, but I realized, as I stood bare in front of Edward's bathroom mirror, that I didn't regret it. I couldn't help the jittery excitement bellied in my stomach or the way a smile would slip onto my face every time I thought of his arm wrapped around me.

Edward liked me, at least enough to want to take care of me.

_And, God, did I ever like him._

I showered quickly that morning and slipped back into my jeans and sweater from yesterday. I checked my appearance and felt suddenly deflated. I looked like a sad, wet and very flushed puppy dog. I hadn't even bothered putting on my bra the day before. But there was nothing I could do about that at the moment.

When I walked into the kitchen, Edward was waiting for me by the door. When he saw me, he smiled that crooked smile of his and then proceeded to stare at me for a good minute before finally saying, "We still have a little time if you wanna grab coffee on the way."

"Okay."

Again, we walked in silence, both of us catching each other stealing little glances here and there. Something had shifted, though I wasn't sure what. Then, I had a terrible thought.

Edward had told me that he wanted to be my _friend_. Was that all he saw himself being to me? Did I want him to see me as something more than that?

Who was I kidding? Of course, I did.

I knew it was silly. He looked at me too much, tried too hard, and touched me too often. But I couldn't ignore the tiny voice of doubt threatening to kill my buzz.

When we got to the coffee shop, Edward offered to buy my coffee but I turned him down. He had done enough for me already.

It was a short, four-minute walk to the lecture hall, but the wind made it feel like an eternity. When we finally got there, we were three minutes late, which for me, was very out of the ordinary.

The door to the auditorium creaked open and as usual, everyone looked up, including Rose and Alice. Edward and I scurried down the left aisle and into the empty seats beside them. I wasn't sure if I was surprised that Edward took a seat right next to me or if I had been expecting it. Either way, it made me happy.

Rose and Alice on the other hand, were obviously shocked. I turned to meet their unwavering attention and was met with accusatory eyes. It took me a moment to realize that Edward had caught on to their silent question as well.

"What's the deal?" he chuckled under his breath.

Alice looked as though she'd had an aneurysm and Rose just looked proud.

"So, you and Bella spent the night together, huh?" Rose blurted out, a bit louder than she probably intended.

"Shut up, Rosalie!" I hissed.

**"**No, good for you, I approve. This walk-of-shame look suits you," she whispered back, smiling so wide I worried her face would crack in two.

"What '_walk-of-shame_ _look_'?"

"Wrinkled clothes? Wet hair? Seriously? I think it's pretty obvious."

Edward laughed and I raised a brow at him. Rose was never going to let me live this one down.

"Shh. I wanna hear what Dr. Mullens is saying." I said, attempting to end this interrogation.

"Ha. Sure. We'll talk later."

And with a wink of Rose's eye, my fate was sealed.

I elected not to think about my inevitable inquisition until after class. In all honesty, I did need to hear the lesson being taught. I was getting a low B in this class, and due to my type A personality, was completely dissatisfied by that reality. But Edward's arm kept brushing mine and even though I heard something along the lines of the production of pyruvic acid, it didn't really click. Instead, I was thinking about being in Edward's bed. How had I ended up in Edward's bed?

He leaned towards me halfway through lecture and whispered something I guessed might be the lyrics to an Archies song.

"Those aren't even the right words." I laughed.

"_Sugar, duh, duh, duh, duh, oh honey, honey_ … that's not right?"

I rolled my eyes at him, fighting the urge to laugh out loud. He was a terrible singer. "If you're trying to impress me with your knowledge of 70's music, that song came out in '69."

He sighed and smirked at me. "Close enough."

"I'll make you a mixtape." I offered and this time he was the one trying not to laugh.

"How old _are _you, Bella."

"Shut up." I retorted, sticking my tongue out like a little kid. "Everyone owns a CD player."

"No, you're right. Fine. I will accept this 90s-retro-hipster gesture of yours ... on one condition."

"And what's that?"

"That you at least try not to get mad at me next time I see you."

"Ha." I jested, leaning in a bit closer. "I think that's more up to you than it is to me."

Edward nodded. "All right, but how am I supposed to know what makes you angry when I barely know you at all?"

I shrugged. "I guess you'll have to figure it out."

"I look forward to it." he replied with a wink.

I could feel my heart in my throat.

Lecture ended a few minutes late, which didn't surprise me since it was Friday and Dr. Mullens loved to entertain us with weekly episode of 'Fun Fact Friday.' We all stood to pack as usual and wandered in groups of three or four out into the main hall. Rose and Alice tagged behind Edward and me, to give us space I guess. I thought he might come to lunch with us, but then he turned to me and said, "I'll see you later, okay?" And I said, "Okay," and that was the end of that.

The familiar feeling of dread crept up on me as Alice and Rose closed in, each one grabbing hold of one of my hands and dragging me out the front doors of the building towards the cafeteria.

"So** ...** tell us all about it." Alice beamed.

I shook my head. "Nothing happened."

Rose snorted in disgust. "What do you mean nothing happened? We saw you two. You were practically in his lap."

"I mean that _nothing happened._"

"Look into my eyes and tell me you didn't stay at his place last night."

Rose pulled me to a halt and urged me to look at her. I'd always been a shitty liar. "Ok, fine. I did stay at his place. But nothing happened."

"Oh, my God!" Alice squealed pulling me along again. "That's ... when did this happen. I thought you weren't into casual sex."

"I'm not!" I exclaimed wishing Alice wouldn't talk so loud. "We didn't have sex. We didn't even kiss."

Alice's brow furrowed. "I don't understand."

"So what?" Rose interjected. "You just chickened out? And now you're stuck with him as a lab partner for the rest of the semester. He's never gonna ask you over again. I mean, we're not kids, Bella. There's no such thing as a platonic, co-ed sleepover when your twenty years old. I mean, that's really weird."

She didn't even know the half of it. But, despite the fact that Rose wasn't getting the full picture, my insecurities from earlier came creeping over me. Had Edward expected me to kiss him?

Or more?

My face had fallen, but Rose wasn't finished. "I mean, does he think you're weird now? I bet he thought you guys were gonna hook up and you totally should have. Ed-what's-his-face is really hot."

"You don't understand. We ... well." I couldn't tell them what had happened. I just couldn't. "Never mind. You're probably right."

On the way to lunch, I wondered if she was right.

Why hadn't Edward tried anything with me? Not that I would have welcomed any advances, but it seemed so strange to me. We were two, single young adults. We had no ties or responsibilities, at least I didn't. To my knowledge, Edward was free to do whatever (and whoever) he wanted; which may have made me panicked. Was he hooking up with girls as Rose had said? Most of the girls here were much more experienced than I was and carried much less baggage. What if one of them caught his eye?

I wasn't even entirely sure why I was acting this way over a guy. It wasn't like me. But I moped around all through lunch and for a good hour and a half afterward in the library with Alice and Rose. I knew I was in way over my head. I had virtually nothing to offer Edward in the way of romance. I had never had a real relationship, never had sex, and never even fooled around. I couldn't make it through more than a few hours without a healthy dose of anti-anxiety medication.

I was a mess.

I decided to call it a day around three o'clock and headed back to my car in the main parking lot. The drive home today felt endless and lonely. I kept going over the past twenty-four hours in my head over and over again.

I was obsessing.

Edward wanted to be my friend. He wanted me to stay at his apartment if I ever felt I couldn't go home. He wanted to know what made me mad. What did it all mean? I realized around the sixty-fourth block of Keystone Avenue that I didn't even have his phone number; though I wasn't sure I would have the guts to call him if I did.

All I knew was that I wanted to talk to him, to see him and I couldn't wait until Monday rolled around.

I had never felt that about anyone or anything.

Not once in my whole life.

And I was terrified of what that might mean.


	8. Chapter 8

We Were Born To Die

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. Shout out to Fran for helping me with this fic. You're awesome!

I spent most of the weekend avoiding my mother. She said she had a date on Saturday night, and evidently, it went well because she didn't come home until late Sunday afternoon. Had it been anyone else, I might have worried. But this was Renee we were talking about, and when it came to men, her judgment was consistently terrible.

I made enchiladas for dinner that night and ate in my room. Bree, who was very seldom at home, was dropped off by her friend's mom around nine and went straight to bed. Our living situation was strained to say the least. No one liked it. We all kept to ourselves, which kept our discomfort to a minimum, but it was hard to deny the elephant in the middle of the room.

On Monday morning, I offered to give Bree a ride to school, which she accepted, mostly because it was raining and she was running late. It was February now, but the cold still hadn't let up, which was fairly typical for Indy this time of year. Bree and I rode in silence, all bundled up in my heated car. When I dropped her in front of the school, she told me she'd see me later and I told her to have a nice day. It was the closest thing I'd had to normal, familial interaction in a long, long time.

I hadn't thought of Edward much that weekend, which had taken a lot of effort on my part. I was a naturally introspective person and it was unlike me not to analyze the crap out of things. However, obsessing over Edward made me feel like a loser. He probably wasn't obsessing over me, I told myself, so I should carry on as if nothing was different until I confirmed otherwise. This line of thinking had been going really well up until Monday morning, but today I had biology lecture and lab. I would definitely see him at some point, and for some reason this made me nervous. I would have liked to say that what Rose **has** said didn't bother me but it did. It had been bothering me since Friday. Edward had had the opportunity to observe my weaknesses and now I wasn't sure if he thought of me as a friend or a charity case.

I tried to listen to the radio on my way downtown, but I couldn't focus on anything but Edward. I contemplated all of the different ways he might receive me today, as well as all the different ways I could respond to him.

What did I even want out of this?

What was my desired outcome?

The real issue was that I had no prior experience on which I could gauge my situation. I barely had female friends, let alone male ones. Flirtation wasn't even a word in my vocabulary.

Was that what we were doing?

Flirting?

Did I know how to flirt?

I was asking myself a lot of questions to which I just didn't have any answers. Not to mention the fact that there wasn't much time left to come up with a solution to my problem. I didn't know how I should act around Edward and had come to the rather depressing realization that, even if I did, I was too distracted to think logically when we were together. He had been right all along. He did make me nervous.

When I pulled into the first open parking space in the lot, I killed the engine and sat for a moment, breathing hard and thinking harder. I needed to calm down. I hadn't had the nerve to start taking my new prescription, but the anxiety creeping up on me this morning was making me brave. I retrieved the full bottle of pills from my purse and dumped a few of them into my left hand.

I swallowed them dry.

I was good at that.

I only had thirty minutes before class started, but I couldn't bring myself to get out of the car yet. I needed the Valium to take effect; or rather, I needed to convince myself that it was taking effect. I needed that light, that airiness that I associated with this drug; sudden, artificial peace. I waited until I couldn't wait any longer and then I snatched up my bag from where it sat in the passenger seat and threw open the driver's side door.

When I got to the lecture, it was mostly empty. I quickly scanned the thin crowd for Edward and was relieved when I saw that he wasn't yet there. yet. At least I could eliminate the troublesome scenario of having to decide whether or not to sit next to him if he beat me to class. Instead, all I had to do was deposit myself in my regular place and wait to see what would happen.

Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. Dr. Mullens arrived and so did Rose and Alice. I had all but given up on Edward showing, when he plopped down in the seat next to me. I turned and smiled at him and he smiled back but didn't say anything else. The class had started, but I was feeling unusually chatty. How could Edward just sit there and say nothing to me after everything that happened. I felt like we were keeping some secret between us, as if he knew something about me that nobody else did. I wanted him to be interested in me the way I was in him. No one had ever shown concern for me the way that he did. He was special. However, was I anything special to him?

I waited in silence for an opportunity to speak. up. When Dr. Mullens showed a clip of mitosis, I spotted my opportunity.

"He's so excited that I think he's moaning," I whispered trying not to laugh at the way our professor enthused over the process that was taking place before us. Mullens pressed the replay button for the third or fourth time and Edward laughed. He leaned over.

"I don't think I've ever been that excited about anything in my life."

I shook my head. "He's _so_ lucky he has a career that makes this behavior acceptable."

"I don't know if it's entirely _acceptable_." Edward amended and I tipped my head from side to side in a noncommittal gesture.

"At least he looks happy."

The smile fell from my face. I thought about this a lot. As strange as Dr. Mullens may have appeared to all of us, he seemed content. He was doing something he loved and it fulfilled him. This was something I was sure everyone wanted, but how many of us could or would ever have it? I didn't think I could because no matter where I went or what I did my anxiety would still be a monkey on my back.

Edward must have noticed the change in my demeanor. After a few moments of silence, he cleared his throat to get my attention. When I looked up, he offered me a small smile, his eyes so sincere I thought it might stop my heart.

"You wanna do something fun today?" he asked.

"We have lab." I reminded him avoiding his question. I wasn't sure what he meant when he said 'fun.'

"So?" Edward's rebuttal was immediate. "I have math this afternoon. I can skip. We have at least three hours to screw off. Ditch the girls and we'll go somewhere."

I deliberated for a minute. What if Edward did try something with me? I had no idea what sort of _plans_ he had for the afternoon and I had even less of an idea of what kind of activities I was prepared to take part in. When I reached up to push my hair out of my face, I realized I was sweating bullets. Had Edward noticed? I hoped to God he didn't.

"Um...I don't know. I don't wanna make you skip class." It was the only other good reason I could think of for turning him down. I was grasping at straws.

"You're not making me skip, I'm offering it up. In fact, I'd love to skip math. My professor's voice is mind-numbing." I opened my mouth to offer another excuse, but Edward stopped me. "I think you could use a little excitement in your life. Live a little."

I pursed my lips.

_Excitement? _

"Fine." I blurted out and I could see Dr. Mullens giving me the stink eye from the front of the room though I couldn't care less. I wasn't the only person not paying attention. "But don't come crying to me when you fail math and get stuck with Mr. Personality again next semester."

Edward's smile grew. "Deal. But I won't fail; I'm too smart for that." He winked and I stuck my tongue out at him.

When the lecture ended, I told Rose and Alice that I would see them in lab and followed Edward out the back doors of the lecture hall. I decided I wouldn't allow the strange looks I got from my two best friends to bother me. What I did in my personal life was none of their business anyway. I didn't **really** even understand why Rose cared so much. I'd never even asked her for her opinion.

"I have to stop by my place real quick and grab my wallet if that's okay with you."

I almost stopped dead in my tracks. He wanted me to come back to his apartment? Maybe Rose's opinion, whether I had requested it or not, had been correct all along. "Um, sure. No, I don't mind."

_Did I mind?_

We walked down to the canal apartments where Edward lived without saying a word. He asked me if I wanted to come up and not wanting to stand out in the cold, I took him up on this offer. A short, awkward, elevator ride later, I found myself back in the entryway of Edward's apartment. Wringing my hands and hoping that I hadn't gotten myself into a situation I wasn't ready to deal with, I watched as Edward set his keys on the counter and turned to face me.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" he asked gesturing towards the fridge.

I shook my head. "No, thanks, I'm good."

He nodded. "Okay. I'll be just a minute so make yourself at home."

"Thanks."

Edward went over to the closet on the other side of his unmade bed, pulled a jacket out of a pile on the floor and disappeared into the bathroom. I paced back and forth from the door to the other side of the tiny kitchen. It was hard to believe that I had slept in that bed just a few nights ago. If I were Rose, I would have done a lot more than slept. But I couldn't help but wonder if Edward would be talking to me today if I had. Would we, whatever we were, be finished? There was no way for me to know.

I waited for what felt like forever but was probably only a few minutes, asking myself why on earth I hadn't told him I was busy. _Because, _I reminded myself, _your only other option was sitting in the library with Rose and Alice while they talk about their intended conquests. _For once, it would be nice not to be the third wheel.

Edward emerged from the bathroom with a heavy leather jacket zipped over the hoodie he had worn to lecture that morning. I watched him grab a black wallet and a set of keys off of the counter and I turned to follow him. "You okay to walk for a while?" he asked me.

I glanced down at my worn-out gray jacket and shrugged. "Sure."

We walked further east and after a few minutes, I asked him where we were going. I was feeling perkier now that I knew any sort of sex was off the table. He had stopped for his wallet just as he'd said and this made me like him all the more.

He was honest.

But had he not tried anything with me because he was a gentleman or because he had no desire to do so? Once again, this was a question I could not possibly answer.

"I don't know. I haven't thought that far ahead," he chuckled. "Whatever catches your eye..."

I nodded.

"You hungry?" Edward asked.

I shook my head.

He fixed his eyes straight ahead and looked thoughtful for a moment before turning to me with renewed determination. "Okay. New plan. You like music, right?"

I nodded again. "Everybody loves music."

"Do you play any instruments?"

I furrowed my brow. "I picked up the piano a little when I was a kid. No one actuallytaught me to play or anything. It was kinda just a hobby. What does that have to do with anything?"

Ignoring my inquiry, Edward lit up with enthusiasm. "Me too. I started taking lessons when I was maybe eight, but I quit when I realized I could pretty much figure out how to play anything I wanted. Plus, classical music is all about structure, and what fun is that? There's nothing creative about playing it. Now...to be the guys that wrote those pieces...the classics, I mean...that would be something."

I grinned. "Yeah. I really wish I could play the guitar though."

"I play a bit," Edward admitted, pressing the crosswalk button and shoving his hands deep in the pockets. "I could teach you some if you'd like."

I shrugged. "Nah. Don't waste your time. I am incapable of coordinating that kind of hand movement."

We both laughed. I could feel myself blushing for no apparent reason.

"Did you play any sports in school?" Edward questioned. This made me laugh ever harder.

"Oh, God, no! You've noticed how accident-prone I am, right? I can't walk across a flat surface without tripping and hurting myself."

"Point taken."

"You wanna hear something really pitiful?"

"And what would that be?" he prompted.

I sighed and started in on my rather embarrassing story. "Well...when I was about thirteen I was at that point in my education where my brain was getting bigger and my athletic skill set was getting smaller."

Edward chuckled, running and hand through his messy auburn hair. "Okay."

"Anyway...I had a lot of injuries that year, and halfway through the semester I got hit in the nose with a basketball. It was broken and the principal made the executive decision that it would be in everyone's best interest if I were exempt from P.E."

"Really? You actually got kicked out of gym for being too klutzy?" I covered my face with both hands, regrettably nodding my head. "That's actually adorable," Edward admitted and I found myself peeking out from between my fingers.

"It's not, though. It's ridiculous. Who's even ever heard of that?" I argued though I couldn't hold back the little giggles bubbling up in the back of my throat.

Suddenly, Edward grabbed me by the hand and tugged me into a corner building. I missed the sign, out front, but once inside, it didn't take me long to figure out where we were. It was a music store. Edward pulled me past all of the guitars and other equipment, past the big sound systems and music books to the very back where they kept the grand pianos and sat me down in front of one.

"I haven't played in forever," I admitted, hoping he would let me out of this. Aside from my lack of practice recently, there was also the stage fright to consider. I didn't like to perform in front of crowds, even if it was just a crowd of one ...or rather a crowd of Edward.

"That's okay," he insisted, placing my fingers on the keys and taking a seat on the bench beside me. I watched as his fingers danced across the keys, tapping out the rhythm to _'Heart and Soul'_ and I grinned at him, giving in.

We played the two-part harmony it seemed every child who had ever taken a piano lesson knew, our arms occasionally brushing as my hands moved lower.

_ "Heart and soul...I fell in love with you, heart and soul...just like a fool would do, __madly__...because you stole my heart..." _

I sang, mostly to myself and half-hoping that Edward would join. He was tone deaf, but I liked it.

I stumbled on the song's ending note and we both burst into hysterics. The tension between us seemed so silly now. I looked to my left and there he was, just inches from me, so comfortable and...understanding. I had never felt close to anyone in my entire life—not my mother or my sister or my friends. But, since that night in the parking lot, I had felt free to share things about myself that I hadn't previously thought to tell anybody. Strangely, I felt as though I could tell Edward anything. I wanted him to know me more than I had ever wanted anything before.

"You know..." he began and I fell silent. "I never knew the lyrics to that until just now."

"Really?"

He looked at me again with that same thoughtful expression. I waited for him to say something, but he didn't, just ran a hand nervously through his hair and stared at me.

"What?" I asked.

He shook his head, his lips parting as though he was going to speak, but then hesitating. I urged him on. "You're not like anyone I've ever met, Bella. You just...It seems as if you just know everything and you see _everything. _Like, really _see _it. I love that about you."

I dropped my eyes, feeling a bit uncomfortable. Though I wasn't sure what he meant by any of that, the word love had my heart skipping in ways I didn't appreciate. It was silly. I hardly knew him, but it made my breath catch. I needed to change the subject.

"So, what's next on the agenda?" I questioned without looking up at him.

"Whatever you want to do."

When I did look up, I felt guilty. Edward's expression had fallen. I had shot him down again without realizing it. I hadn't meant to; I'd just reacted. I turned my whole body in his direction, crossing my legs over the heavily polished bench and forcing him to meet my eyes. "I am kinda hungry after all..." I told him, offering him a small smirk.

He returned the gesture and bobbed his head up and down. "Well, you heard the lady." And there was that wink again. I could tell he was trying to recover his pride and I wouldn't interfere with his efforts.

Then, I remembered. "I don't have any money." I had forgotten about my monetary situation until then. My mother had somehow misplaced the envelope with my lunch money for the week, which meant she had already spent it. This was not the first time Renee had let her shopping habits run away with her. I could have bet my life that there was either a bottle of top-shelf vodka or a new dress hidden away in her closet. Regardless, I was broke. Now, my stomach was rumbling and it seemed like a much more pressing problem than it had been this morning.

"I got it."

I shook my head. "No. That's okay."

"No, seriously, I don't mind."

"I can't let you pay for my lunch, Edward." I insisted stubbornly. I didn't like taking handouts, even if I needed them.

Edward's lips drew into a hard line. "Fine. If you won't let me take you to lunch, how about letting me feed you leftovers. I have a fridge full of spaghetti at home and somebody has to help me eat it."

"You've already done so much for me. I don't want you to go out of your way..."

"It's not out of my way at all. I forgot to print my lab instructions anyway."

Edward got to his feet and waited for me to follow. I had been so scared of going to his apartment with him this morning, but now I couldn't say no. Feeling bold, I stood and threw my bag over my shoulder, shadowing Edward as we walked briskly past all of the shiny new equipment in the Meridian Music showroom.

The walk back seemed longer and the more time I spent shuffling through the light afternoon, pedestrian traffic, the more impatient and unsettled I became. Where had all of this bravery come from? I felt jittery, but I couldn't bring myself to care. I was always jittery. At this point, it was more like a fixture of my personality than an actual inconvenience. Besides, Edward seemed to be just as nervous as I was. Every once in a while, he would turn and offer me a small smile, then return his gaze to his feet and the sidewalk in front of him. When we finally made our way into the complex, I recognized that same awkward energy between us I had felt that first day in the library elevator. I was so aware of his movements and it appeared he was also aware of mine. We rode up to his floor on opposite sides of the small, stainless steel box, staring one another down.

"After you," Edward mumbled when the doors slid open with a ding. I gave him one stiff nod and stepped quickly out into the hall.

I waited for Edward to unlock the door before finding myself suddenly on the other side of it. I breathed in one shaky breath. Even though I had been here twice before, something felt different this time.

Edward took off his jacket and moved to throw it across the bed.

"I can hang up your coat if you want. We still have a while before class so..."

I nodded in agreement and shrugged out of my thin outerwear. I hadn't realized until just then that I was freezing. A shiver ran down my spine as I hugged my arms around my torso in an effort to get warm.

"Sorry, if I kept you out in the cold too long," Edward said sheepishly. He made his way over to the refrigerator and pulled out a pot of red sauce and a Ziploc bag full of cold pasta. "I just thought it would be nice to go somewhere off campus, you know?"

"It was."

We were facing each other in the small kitchen space, sandwiched between the breakfast bar and the counters, which lined the walls. I could feel his body heat he was so close, and suddenly, something in me changed.

I had spent most of my life being afraid of everything. I was afraid now, watching him watch me. However, something urged me to lean in closer, so I did. It was as though some force was pulling me towards him and whatever it was; curiosity, attraction, I couldn't seem to stop myself.

Edward was perfectly still as I ran a hand up the planes of his chest, coming to rest my palm just above where his heart beat. I looked up into his eyes and saw the same indecisiveness I had seen there earlier. It seemed to me as though Edward was always trying to figure out what was the best thing to do, the right thing to do. And, God, I hoped he thought the right thing was to kiss me.

I waited for some sort of sign in his expression that might tell me how he felt. I waited for him to make the choice, to close the gap between us. It seemed as though a lifetime went by with us just standing there, chests flush, breathing hard, sizing each other up. I had kissed boys before, but never one that made me feel like this.

"Bella..." Edward whispered his eyes softer than I had ever seen them. He was going to tell me something, but suddenly I wasn't sure I wanted to know what that something was.

I lifted myself onto my tiptoes and pressed my lips gently to his, hoping that if he had been planning to tell me he wasn't interested, this might change his mind. His lips were still beneath mine for a moment before they began to move and his hand came up to cup my cheek. I relaxed into him, letting my mouth fall further open, feeling his tongue as it skimmed over my lower lip and dipped inside. I moaned and Edward pulled me closer, his hands clutching hungrily at my waist.

The kiss was over just as abruptly as it had begun. Edward and I pulled away from one another slightly, still so close I could feel his breath on my quivering lips. My emotions were in overdrive. I could hardly believe what I'd just done. I couldn't speak. I didn't know what to say. Edward was silent, his eyes searching mine, seemingly a little panicked. Slowly, as we stood with our bodies pressed together in his dingy kitchen, I realized his startled expression must be a reflection of my own.

Was he glad that I had kissed him? Was I?

I shook my head slightly, feeling something clutch at my chest that I had neer felt before. I couldn't identify the sensation but it made my chest heave. Ordinarily, I would have removed myself from the situation but I couldn't budge an inch. I was like prey trapped under the glare of a predator. Yet, I had been the initiator of all this.

Edward pursed his lips, as he had a habit of doing, and took a deep breath, his hands still planted firmy on either hip. "Was that...okay?" he asked, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

I hesitated because I honestly wasn't sure. I had wanted him to kiss me. Did I want him to kiss me again? Did I want him to touh me? Did I like the way he looked at me now, all heavy breaths and flushed skin and wide eyes?

"Um..." I began, doing my best to sort through what I was feeling. I thought about telling him I had to leave but the thought made my stomache go sour, so I didn't. "Yeah, I think it was."

"You think?" Edward probed. His hands began to retreat from me. My throat tightened. I didn't want him to pull away from me.

"It was okay. It was good." I clarify quickly, my fingers clutching his shirt of their own accord. "It was good." I told him again, my gaze never leaving his eyes.

I felt him leaning towards me and glanced down at his lips. When our mouths met for the second time, I found I was less sure of myself. That first kiss had been sudden. I hadn't had any time to worry. This kiss, however, was slow and purposeful. I felt like I couldn't breath but Edward never faltered, pulling me impossibly closer and running his long, slender fingers through the mess of hair tied up on the crown of my head. He tilted his head to the side to kiss me more deeply and I sighed. Bella had left the building.

And for once, I stopped thinking. I stopped worrying. I stopped obsessing. It was just Edward and me, existing in this perfect moment.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. Shout out to Fran for beta'ing this fic and thanks for reading!

So, somehow, the innocent kiss with Edward had escalated into a full-on makeout session and ten minutes later, I found myself sitting on the breakfast bar with a very enthusiastic Edward standing between my legs. I wasn't exactly sure how my worst fear before coming to his apartment this morning had become a reality: one set into motion by yours truly.

I could feel Edward's hand on the little sliver of skin between my sweater and my jeans. It was slowly creeping further up my back, but I didn't exactly know how to stop it, or if I even wanted to stop it at all.

"Edward," I mumbled in between kisses, more than a little embarrassed by how wanton I sounded. This was not me. I was never like this. But the feeling between my legs told me something different.

"Bella," he whispered back.

What did this mean? It was the question of the day … of my entire life, actually. That was my problem. I was always looking for meaning where maybe there was none. All I knew was that Edward was kissing me and I was tugging on his hair, panting and pushing myself against him. It was all escalating so fast. I felt out of control, but some part of me liked it.

"Edward, I..." I mumbled again, his mouth swallowing up the rest of my sentence. I couldn't think clearly when he was so close. What had I wanted to say to him? Did it matter? No. His hand was all the way up the back of my shirt now, his fingers ghosting delicately over the bare skin below my shoulder blades. "Oh..."

Then, there was a knock at the door.

Everything stopped.

I held my breath.

I felt like a kid who'd been caught breaking some fundamental rule. Edward pulled away from me, murmured a quick "hold on a sec," and went to see who it was. He looked through the peephole and groaned. The door fell open but only a fraction of the way.

"What do you want?" Edward griped. I'd never seen him this openly agitated.

"I've got beer," came a deep voice from the other side of the door, as though this was an obvious explanation. I could almost hear Edward rolling his eyes.

"How did you even get in the fucking building?" he chuckled though he didn't widen the opening to let the stranger in.

"Jasper buzzed me in. He's on his way down now."

"Ugh. No. I'm busy."

I craned my head to see who this guy was. A tall, heavily muscled man came into view. When he saw me, recognition dawned on his face.

"You got a girl in there?" he enthusing, smirking at Edward. "Isn't it a little early in the day for booty calls? Good for you, man."

The man outside laughed, but Edward didn't seem amused.

"Not funny, Em. I'll see you guys later tonight, okay?"

"Whatever you say, Eddie." he replied with a wink.

When the door was shut behind him, Edward looks indecisive again. He didn't come towards me, just watched me where I sat, perched on his counter top. "I'm really sorry about that," he offered, biting his lip anxiously. I would be lying if I said I wasn't more than a little embarrassed, but I nodded and told him that it was all right.

"Emmet can be kind of a skeeze, but he means well."

I nodded again. Half of me wanted to resume kissing him while the other half of me just wanted a little blue pill. I seriously thought about bolting. Maybe I could ditch lab and just go home. Then, I thought better of it. Home to what? To my mother and my sister's empty bedroom?

Instead, I decided to let this play out. I had never taken a real risk in my life outside of the incessant pill popping which was, in my defense, completely sanctioned by my psychiatrist. I was in foreign territory, but I had put myself there. The discomfort overwhelming me had not been imposed upon me by something out of my control, such as my drunk, dying mother or my anxiety disorder. For the first time ever, I decided to take a gamble on something I thought I might want. So, I sat there and waited for Edward to make his move.

After a few moments of saying nothing, Edward came towards me again, approaching me the way someone might approach a cornered animal. Maybe it was my inclination towards getting angry at his advances or maybe he was just unsure of where we stood; maybe both. Either way, he took his sweet time closing the small divide separating us. His eyes shifted from mine to the ground. I'd teetered back and forth between love and hate so often with Edward that the poor guy was getting whiplash.

What was wrong with me?

Just as I didn't know how to act around him, he didn't know how to act around me because I was unpredictable. My mood was always swinging from one extreme to another and he knew that.

I decided I needed to prove him wrong.

I swallowed back my nerves and reached between us, pulling his chin upwards so that we made eye contact once more. I nodded at him deliberately. It was a slow and meaningful gesture and I hoped he understood, but just in case he didn't, I told him. "It's more than okay, Edward."

His eyebrows were raised so high I thought they were going to blur into his hairline. After a month and a half of, dare I say, sexual tension, Edward and I were finally beginning to understand what we wanted from one another. A brilliant, crooked smile lit up Edward's face and all of a sudden, he looked mischievous.

"Good." he beamed.

His lips were on mine again; his hands finding their way back to where they had rested on my bare back. I felt him nip gently at my lower lip with his teeth and whimpered. I could feel myself getting wet.

I wasn't hungry anymore. The cold spaghetti on the counter beside us was all but forgotten. Biology was pushed far from my mind. I didn't give a damn about any of it. All that mattered was this incredible heat building up inside me.

When Edward tried to lift the hem of my shirt, I didn't stop him. Before I knew what had happened, I was half naked before him. I couldn't help but think that this was the most of my body that anyone had seen since I was running around my mother's old house in diapers. I felt frightened. My heart beat out a ragged rhythm as he kissed down my body, his large, calloused hands fondling me in places I had never been touched before. But I couldn't shake the memory of what Rose had said to me a few days before.

_'I bet he thought you guys were gonna hook up...does he think you're weird now?'_

It had sounded so harsh to me, but it was the truth. Most girls my age had a decent resume as far as sex went, while I had no experience whatsoever. The last boy I'd kissed had been the son of my dad's friend when I was fifteen and it had only happened a handful of times. I had always been an unusual girl, regarded as fragile, withdrawn and innocent. I didn't want to be that girl anymore.

I spoke before I could think any better of it.

"Edward, will you have sex with me?" It came in a quipped tone, straight and to the point. He froze, lifting his head from where he was below me, kissing along my collarbone.

"What?" he asked, sounding more than a little surprised.

I took a deep, steadying breath and pressed on. I had always been stubborn, and when I made up my mind about something, I usually could not be dissuaded. "I want you to make love to me, Edward," I told him again, arching my back to emphasize my bare chest. "Don't you want to?"

I could hear Edward's breath hitch as he nodded in affirmation. His hands came up to cup my breasts before winding their way around to my backside. He lifted me off the counter and walked us swiftly over to the bed where he dropped me. I fell back against the soft, graycomforter with a quiet thump. We laid there kissing and groping at one another for a long while before something shifted.

I felt Edward's finger pulling at the button of my jeans and yanking them down followed by his own. My panties and his boxers joined the small pile of clothing growing on the floor. I was entirely naked now and feeling rather self-conscious, but I figured one naked girl was just as good as the next. There was no sense in worrying over how I compared to the other girls Edward had been with because obviously he _had _been with other girls.

When I glanced down, I gasped. I had never seen a penis in the flesh before and the sight of Edward so close to where my arousal was centered struck me with fear. It was all very real now. Edward's hands drifted lower and lower. I almost stopped him, but when his fingers drifted over my clitoris, I felt something new entirely.

"Oh, God, Edward..." I cried out. Encouraged by this, he plunged a finger inside me. I whimpered, hoping that the neighbors hadn't heard me. I had touched myself before, but this was different. I couldn't describe the way he was making me feel. "Oh, my God, Edward, yes. Please!"

I didn't know what I was begging for, but Edward pumped into me harder, and in a matter of minutes, I heard the sound of a condom wrapper being ripped open. I looked up and Edward was stilled above me, asking permission with his eyes. I was at the point of no return now and a choice had to be made. Reaching up, I grabbed the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. My hands ran up and down the hard lines of his abdomen. He seemed so perfect to me. I was not the girl who was asked out by handsome boys. I was not the girl who got kissed by handsome boys and I certainly had never been the girl who got fucked by handsome boys. Yet, here I was. I decided to take the plunge.

I nodded.

Edward pushed forward quite suddenly and I cried out. I'm not gonna lie, it really hurt. I felt a single tear sliding down my cheek.

I huffed once.

I was fine.

I had done it.

Edward was _inside of me_. I pushed down the frenzied panic and opened my eyes. I was shocked by what I saw.

Edward looked absolutely horrified.

"What?" I asked, furrowing my brow. What could possibly be wrong?

"Bella, are you...a virgin?" He said 'virgin' as if it was a dirty word.

I shrugged, admittedly inappropriately considering the circumstance. "Not anymore."

Edward's head fell to my shoulder. He still hadn't moved. The pain had subsided, but now I was experiencing something much worse: rejection.

"Are you okay? Do you want me to..."

"I'm fine." I insisted though now I wasn't quite sure that I was. "Just...keep going."

I tried to move a bit beneath him to convince him that I was all right, which must have worked because soon he was rocking back and forth against me, panting and groaning into my ear. When he lifted my knee to change the angle, I cried out. I felt so full, so...connected. How had I gone my whole life without this? Edward thrust in and out of me at a slow, measured pace, increasing by tiny increments as time passed. I grew louder and he moved faster.

"Oh, my God, Bella...agh, Bella."

I loved the way he said my name and when I felt his hand slip between our slick, sweat-glistening bodies to rub my clit, I lost it. I screamed and came so hard it made me dizzy.

_How had I never done this?_

Edward followed close behind me and the sensation of him twitching inside me was surprisingly distinguishable. I didn't need any experience to know how this worked. He collapsed on top of me, droopy eyed and out of breath. My limbs felt like rubber. It all felt very surreal.

I'd actually had sex with Edward.

When he rolled off me and out of me, I felt empty. He hopped out of bed and bounded across the room where he quickly pulled on his jeans. Was this the inevitable let down I'd been dreading? The practical side of me told me it was. I propped myself up on my elbows, feeling just as naked as I was, and pulled the blanket over me. Edward was pacing, pulling at his hair until he looked like a maniac.

"Bella, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I...I didn't know you were...I assumed...I assumed I wasn't the first guy...damn it." His jaw clenched and he looked at me with wild eyes. I had never seen someone so apologetic in my life. I just didn't understand why. I wanted to ask him what in the world he was so upset about, but I felt tongue-tied. It felt like someone was stepping on my throat. I prayed to God I wouldn't have a panic attack here, naked in Edward's bed. That would really be the cherry on top. "Listen, I never would have had sex with you if I had known..."

When he had first gotten up, I had been hurt. However, now, this admission made me murderous. He never would have had sex with me if he had known _what_? That I was a virgin?

"Great." I seethed, gathering the comforter around me and shimmying out of bed. I was beyond embarrassed, but mostly, I was pissed. "That's just fucking great. Okay. I'm sorry I got my cooties on you; hopefully, my virginity isn't catching."

Edwards jaw dropped.

I ripped the comforter from around me and shoved it in his chest. When I bent to pick up my clothes, I remember that I was naked, but I couldn't bring myself to care. I was on a full-on rampage and there was no stopping me now.

"Bella, that's not what I meant..."

"Yeah, sure. You're worried I'm gonna get all attached to you or something just because you were my first. Don't flatter, yourself, Edward."

"Oh, my God, Bella! You are blowing this way out of proportion! I never said anything like that! All I was saying was that..."

I had pulled my sweater on, but my foot kept getting snagged on the holes in my jeans so I gave up. "You don't owe me anything, Edward. I don't need an explanation."

"Bella, hold on a second!"

But I didn't.

I threw my bag over my shoulder and stormed out the front door of his apartment with my pants rolled up under my arm. When I heard the door open behind me, I spun around to face a flustered, barely dressed Edward. I didn't need to hear any excuses.

"Bella-"

I couldn't look at him. I could barely breathe. He couldn't see me like this. I wouldn't allow it. "I don't want to talk to you!" I shouted, turning on my heels and storming away. He followed and I turned on him once more. "I told you I don't want to talk, Edward!"

"But, Bella-"

"No!"

"Don't be like this. I didn't mean-"

"It doesn't matter, Edward."

He took a step back and nodded stoically. I had effectively silenced him but my own thoughts were still blaringly loud. I watched him walk back to his room with glassy eyes. I realized all too late that I had left my underwear behind and was now standing in a public hallway angry, freshly fucked and wearing a shirt that just barely covered my butt cheeks. How had I ever thought this was a good idea? I was gripped with remorse and the most sickening feeling.

I was just like my mother.

Absentmindedly, I wondered how many times she had been in this position. I wondered if her long and sordid past had begun in a similar manner. I was disappointed in myself, but mostly, I felt like crying. I shuffled down the hall to the staircase and plopped down beside it. Ripping my bag open, I searched desperately for my Valium. When I found it somewhere near the bottom, I unscrewed the top and poured several into my palm. The sensation of them sliding down my throat made me feel a bit relieved. At least I knew that relief was coming. I waited a long time for my heartbeat to slow, for my hyperventilation to subside, but it didn't. Half an hour passed and nothing had changed. I was still a blubbering mess. Tiny hiccups escaped my lips. I had never felt so low in my life.

I couldn't face lab. It was time to go home.

I got to my feet and pulled on my jeans. Somehow, my hair had come undone, so I tied it back up into my usual sloppy bun and wiped away my tears. I didn't feel like taking the elevator so I walked down to the first floor and out into the street, feeling lost and confused. I was such an idiot. How could I have let this happen?

I didn't remember walking back to my car or driving home. Instead, I found myself inexplicably back in the dingy, unlit, front entry of the apartment. It seemed colder and emptier than usual and I dragged myself to the kitchen. I had made the one mistake I had promised myself I would never make. Had I tricked Edward into sleeping with me? His words echoed in my mind. _I never would have had sex with you if I had known..._

My stomach growled and suddenly I was hyper aware of the hunger pangs I had been vaguely aware of all day. I made my way to the fridge and threw open the door in hopes that maybe, Renee had found the time to buy _something_. But, as usual, all I found was yogurt and a discount bottle of Svedka. I stared down that bottle, contemplating what sort of power it held. My mother had spent her life drowning her sorrows in it.

Again, I didn't think. I felt my hands wrapping themselves around the cool glass, and the metal cap twisting off in my palm. It burned going down and I scrunched up my nose at the new sensation. Was this what it was supposed to taste like? I had never drunk before for obvious reasons. Alcohol had always frightened me. I was afraid of losing control, afraid of becoming someone like Renee. But, in all of my efforts to maintain some meager grip on my sanity, I had failed. I was no better than her or any of the wandering men she had carted in and out of my life. I was a disaster, just the same as all of them.

Along with my booze, I grabbed my CD player and headed for the bathroom. I turned the shower on full blast and popped in one of my dad's, old Zeppelin tapes. The small stack of rock albums in my bedroom was all I really had left of him. There were no vivid memories or memorabilia of the time he had spent with me; just a few, overplayed, classic rock records that I hoarded shamelessly.

This particular album was '_Physical Graffiti.'_ It had been released in 1975, after the debut of '_Stairway to Heaven_.' I listened to the familiar intro to '_In my Time of Dying' _and stripped out of my clothes. I felt dirty. I stepped into the hot spray, the heavy glass bottle of clear liquid gripped in my hand as I sang along. "_In my time of dying, want nobody to mourn...All I want for you to do is take my body home...well, well, well, so I can die __easy__..." _

I sat down on the floor of the shower and nursed my drink, crying silently and letting the water wash over me.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

By the time dinner rolled around, I was three sheets to the wind.

I had never been drunk before, but it seemed to suit me. I could only assume it was in my blood. When I got out of the shower, I pulled on my mother's, blue satin robe, and, rather than returning the CD player to my room, gathered up all of my tapes and my stereo and set them up in the kitchen.

Drunk dancing over the cool kitchen tiles turned into drunk spaghetti making and terribly loud singing. When I burned my fingertip on the hot edge of a pan, I jumped and cursed loudly.

"Ah, shit!" I shook out the throbbing pain in my appendage and went back to stirring the pot.

My mind was bleary, but not so much that I had forgotten the events of this afternoon.

Edward: I was so angry with him I could scream, although I was trying very hard not to act on that impulse. Who did he think he was anyway? I thought about calling him on the phone before I remembered that we had never exchanged numbers. All there was to do was sit in my kitchen and stew. I watched the water for the noodles begin to boil along with my anger.

What was I going to do when I went back to biology? My first exam was this coming Friday. I had been hoping to get an A and I felt fairly confident, but now I was kind of hoping I would fail. At least that would give me an excuse to drop the class, as though having a one-night stand with your lab partner wasn't reason enough. I popped the cap on the Svedka for the six or seventh time that evening and took a big swig.

I heard my phone's muted ring and went to look for it under the pile of books and other things spread over the kitchen table. I had made a feeble attempt earlier to do my homework, but the words seemed to be jumping across the page. Tossing the forgotten homework aside, I picked up my outdated cell and flipped it open.

"Hel-lo?" I said, a hiccup disrupting the word halfway through.

"Bella?" queried a voice from the other end line.

"I'm s-sorry..." I slurred. "Who is this?"

"It's Alice." I took a deep breath. I really didn't want to talk to anybody, but I supposed Alice was the least of all evils. "Bella, are you okay? Why didn't you come to lab today? Edward was looking for you. He seemed weird and I wanted to make sure nothing had happened to you."

I gagged a little before answering. I didn't feel too well. "N-it's othing...I mean, it's nothing. Stupid. I'm just _so_ stupid."

I could hear Alice gasping into the receiver. "Bella, are you drunk?"

"No." I swallowed, but it wasn't very convincing.

"Oh, my God, Bella. You don't even sound coherent. Where are you?"

"Where do y-you think, Al...Alice?"

"I'm not kidding, Bella. _Where are you?_"

"I'm at home. I'm... s'fine."

"Hold tight. I'll be there soon."

"No!" I shouted. I couldn't stand for anyone to see me this way.

"Don't be ridiculous, Bella. You shouldn't be alone right now. Is anyone with you?"

"What do you th-think?" For some reason, rhetorical questions were pouring out of me.

"Okay. I'm leaving now. I'll see you in a few."

The line went dead.

Alice didn't have a car. She shared one with her mother who lived near campus, which meant she probably had no way of getting to my apartment thirty minutes away. I noticed I was getting a little dizzy so I sat down on the floor right where I was, all else forgotten. I called out for someone to come help me to my bedroom, but there was no one there. My mother was, who knows where, and my sister was out somewhere socializing. I couldn't even muster up the energy to be angry with them. Instead, I resolved myself to loneliness and laid back on the chilled white tiles, letting Pink Floyd's '_Wish You Were Here' _wash over me. I floated away on the melody, and the alcohol… music mixing, making my blood sing. For a split second, I understood why Renee was like this; I understood the way someone could numb them self, however, this was not the first time I had been numb, I realized. I did it every day, one way or another. We all had our own personal brands of destruction. Mine was simply different from hers.

I closed my eyes and hummed along, imagining pretty things, the sort of things I had dreamed of when I was a child. I dreamed of faraway beaches, wildflowers and the open road. Far away from the gloomy gray colors of my midwestern home and these four walls that seemed to have fenced me in permanently. I imagined what it would be like to have the sort of freedom that this music made me feel.

Everybody died. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jimmy Page: they burned bright and fast, but at least they burned. My flame seemed as though it was extinguished for so long. It was hard to remember anything but this emptiness. Today had been a first. I had burned and it had blown up in my face.

Ordinarily, I might have gone to see the Good Doctor on a day like this. Instead, I'd drank myself into a stupor. Oddly, I didn't feel any worse for it. It wasn't his fault that therapy had failed me. It was my own. I was my own worst enemy and no amount of drugs or discussion could stop me from doing what I did best: thwarting myself.

"Bella?" a voice called.

I opened my eyes.

At first, I thought it might be my mother but when I looked up, I saw Alice standing in the doorway, soaking wet, her face contorted by concern.

"Honey, what happened?" she cried, dropping to her knees beside me and pulling me into an upright position. I slumped forward, not anticipating how heavy my body actually way. When had I got this _heavy_?

"Ugh." I groaned, struggling to straighten my spine and finally succeeding.

"Just...come on, Bella. Let's get you to your room before your mom gets home."

Alice looped my arm around her and pulled me to my feet. I scoffed. "Renee doesn't care." I spat, but she led me away anyways.

"I'm sure that's not true."

It was nothing but false comfort. I had taken my mother's advice this afternoon and look where it had landed me.

It was a long and exhausting to get from the kitchen to the bedroom. I made it finally, a little flustered but fine. Alice excused herself for a moment. I heard the sound of water sizzling and pots clanging before she reappeared at last with a large glass of water and a damp towel. She didn't say a word, only handed me the glass and motioned for me to drink.

We sat there Indian-style in silence for a moment before Alice finally got around to pushing me for answers one again.

"What happened, Bella?"

My first instinct was to refuse her request for an explanation but when I looked up into her eyes, I knew I would never be able to get away with a lie. Alice really did care. I tried to speak but found myself shrugging instead. I couldn't say the words. It was just too embarrassing.

"Is it your mom?" I shook my head. "Bree?" Again, I shook my head. "Edward?"

That one hit a nerve. I winced as though the mere mention of his name hurt like a slap in the face. "I see," Alice replied in a quiet tone, her gaze dropping to her hands. She looked angry. "What Rosalie said...you know she doesn't think things through..."

I was beginning to break through the haze. Was I sobering up? Lord, I hoped not. I wasn't ready.

I shook my head yet again. "It's not what R...Rose said."

"Then what happened, Bel?"

I pursed my lips and sighed. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I hated to cry in front of people but it was too late. The floodgates had already opened. "We...um. Well...I slept with him...today after lecture. For the first time."

Alice's brow furrowed. "Okay. So...what went wrong? Did you not like it? Was he rough with you? Are you hurt? I'll kill him."

I shook my head, letting more tears fall. "No, it was great. I just...I think he regretted it and now _I_ regret it. I don't think it meant anything. I don't know...how am I supposed to go back to bio now? I mean, he freaked when he found out I was a virgin." _I was a virgin_, those words seemed so odd to me...

Alice rubbed my back methodically, nodding to indicate that she understood. I cried and she let me. I didn't need to explain. She wasn't asking me for answers, just that I let her in on what was bothering me. Before long, I had run out of tears to cry and plopped down on my pillow in frustration.

"Bel?" Alice prodded.

"Yeah?"

"Don't let him get to you, okay? So maybe he's a jerk. Go back into that lab with your head held high. You didn't do anything wrong, all right? It's normal."

Huh. Normal. Why had I ever wanted to be normal?

Alice stayed the night with me. We didn't say much more after that, but she slept in my bed with me and hushed me when I cried. Alice was good that way. She didn't judge you. She simply wanted to be a part of whatever was happening. She wanted to help me, and though I typically didn't welcome help, I needed it tonight.

When I went back to class on Wednesday, I still didn't feel any better. If anything, I'd had more time to brood. I was angrier than ever. So I sat in the very back row of lecture and blockaded the entry to the aisle to protect myself from Edward though I doubted I would be seeing him today. He had gotten what he'd wanted from me and we had no more business together, other than our labs, of course.

I was early as usual so the hall was empty, which was fine with me. I liked the quiet, so I plugged my headphones into my ears and hit the play button on my favorite playlist. This time, it was Van Morrison's '_Crazy Love_.' The tune was putting me to sleep, but I tried to focus my energy on fixing my hair. I had attempted to look nice today, mostly because I didn't want to look like a hot mess the next time I happened to see the man I had given my virginity to, forty-eight hours before. I had worn my nicest sweater dress: a soft, baby blue tunic type thing with three-quarter length sleeves and pretty white lace trimming the bottom. I had decided to keep my signature- sloppy bun because I thought it suited me. My hair was too long to wear down without it being a bother. I lifted my mother's tiny compact I had shoved into my bag that morning to check my mascara.

And that was when I saw him standing behind me.

"A true seventies fan through and through, I see," Edward whispered in my ear, having yanked one of the buds out so I could hear him. He was so close the feel of his breath on my neck made me shiver.

I scowled. "What do you want?"

"Come on, Bella, don't be like that."

I slammed the compact shut and tossed it away. I refused to look at him.

"I am being like that." I snapped.

I heard him walk around the aisle though I still didn't raise my eyes from where they were burning a hole into the back of the seat in front of me. I heard him climbing over my things with some difficulty, but it wasn't long before he had plopped down beside me. Our arms brushed against one another and I pulled away instinctively.

"I'm not interested in speaking to you, Edward," I told him as coolly as I could.

He snorted. "Really? That's how you're gonna play this?"

"Yep." I gave him one stiff nod, crossing my arms over my chest.

Just then, Alice and Rose shuffled into the seats on the other side of me. When I glanced over, I saw Rose's eyes brimming with pride. Alice, on the other hand, did not look amused. She looked murderous.

"Just...you didn't let me explain, Bella. My words didn't come out right at all. I need you to know that..."

"What is there to explain, Edward? It was a mistake. I'm sorry I asked." I shrugged my pissed off, indifferent shrug and locked my eyes on the professor entering the room.

"Damn it, Bella! Do you always have to do that? You always interrupt me before I can finish what I'm saying and then I have to track you down and fucking fix it!" he exclaimed, gesturing wildly with his hands.

"Fix what, Edward? I didn't know there was anything to fix."

"Seriously. Bella we just had se-"

"Did you want the whole world to know?" I hissed, cutting him off. People were shuffling into the hall in hordes now and Edward's voice was growing too loud. The last thing I wanted was for people to know what we'd done, to know how I had been humiliated.

"Sorry, but it's important. I just really need to tell you..."

"Bella doesn't want to talk to you. I think she's made that clear." I glanced over at Alice, who was glaring daggers at the side of Edward's head.

Edward pursed his lips, refusing to budge an inch.

"You have to talk to me sometime."

"Says who?" I shot back.

"Me!" Edward shouted and, this time, everybody turned to look at us.

"Fine!" I shouted back and got up from my seat, storming out of the lecture hall and making a spectacle of myself.

Edward followed me out. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into one of the vending machine alcoves off to the side that always seemed to be empty. It was the closest thing to private we were going to get, not that it mattered now. My little outburst had alerted everyone to our argument. Hopefully, no one would be able to put two and two together.

"Go, ahead, Edward. Explain to me again exactly why you waited until you were _inside me_ to decide that you didn't really want to sleep with me."

My words knocked him back a little bit. He looked at me, pained, as though I had physically hurt him. "Is that what you think happened?" he asked, his voice softening. It almost sounded like he was choking on his own words.

I rolled my eyes, throwing my arms up in the air. "That _is _what happened, Edward!" I was still fuming.

"No, it's not. If you'd stuck around long enough after to let me explain, you would understand what I was trying to say to you!"

I scoffed. "I'm not sure how you could have said what you said in a way to make me feel okay about it. Anyway you cut it, I was humiliated!"

"That's the point!" Edward exclaimed. "I didn't want you to feel that way. That's why...that's why I hit the panic button when I realized I was your first!"

"Don't flatter yourself, Edward. I don't care if you were my first. I'm a big girl. I can handle myself." Though I wasn't entirely sure if that was true or not. "It's not like there's a rule that says I have to be eternally in love with you or anything like that. So, let's just forget the whole thing happened and put it behind us. Then you won't have to explain anything to me. We'll finish the semester and you don't ever have to talk to me af..."

Suddenly, Edward cupped my face securely between his hands, leaning in so close I could almost taste his breath on my lips. "Oh, my God! Would you just shut up for one second, Bella?"

I was speechless. I didn't know what to say. Edward stared me down, his deep green eyes boring into mine and I was mesmerized. How did he manage to do this to me? Now, when he touched me, I was reminded of all the places he had touched me before, of the places his mouth had been. I could feel my traitorous heart pounding away in my chest. Why me?

"That's better. I think I'm beginning to understand how to best get your attention," he chuckled, cracking a sad half-smile. "Will you let me try to make this better?" he asked.

I nodded, apparently struck mute by his proximity.

"Good. Okay, here it goes." Edward inhaled deeply before going on, never breaking his contact with me. "First of all, making love to you, Bella, was not a mistake. It was incredible. That was not the problem. When we got back to the apartment and we were kissing, I was so happy. I...I'd liked you since the first day I met you, but nothing ever seemed to work out between us so I just kind of figured that you were never going to be interested in me. But I kept trying. Then everything happened. I just...I didn't expect you to proposition me like that, and, when you did, I assumed you must have done it before. I mean, that's not how most girls go about losing their virginity. So, I just did it because I wanted you so fucking bad, Bella, you have no idea.

"Then, when I realized you'd never done it before, I panicked because...well, it wasn't exactly the most romantic situation and I felt terrible. If I had known you were so inexperienced, I wouldn't have just pushed into you like that. I would have taken more time with you. I mean, we hadn't even gone on a real date and my whole approach was so..._forward_. I'm sure the entire experience was pretty uncomfortable for you, but then you moved and...I just couldn't control myself. Afterward...I just felt so guilty, I freaked out. I felt like a pig, honestly. I mean, your first experience with..."

"You make it sound like some awful, dirty, rape scene or something." I interrupted and Edward gave me a look. I shrugged.

"Let me finish," he said sternly, arching his brown. "When I went after you, you seemed so angry and then you said _it didn't matter_. Regardless, I don't want you to think that it was just a hookup; at least, it wasn't to _me_. You are so much more than a hookup to me, Bella, and I want you to understand that. Even though we jumped into bed together, it doesn't change what I want...what I've wanted all along."

"And what is that?" I pressed, curious now.

Edward looked away from me, wringing his hands. "Why is this so hard to say? Okay. I...feel very connected to you. I...I have feelings for you, Bella, like _real_ feelings. I didn't say anything because, well, we haven't known each other that long and you tell me to go to hell _all the time _and I took that as a bad sign. But, after Monday, I _had _to tell you."

I didn't know how to respond to that.

"Well, aren't you going to say anything?" Edward asked his voice a little more strained than usual.

I thought for a moment before speaking. "I was glad you were my first...until you said you didn't want to be." I clarified because I needed him to know that, in my book, he hadn't done anything wrong by sleeping with me.

He exhaled sharply, shaking his head back and forth. "No. I'm glad it was _me_. I just wish I could have made it more..."

"No. It was wonderful, Edward. That was not the problem."

We were both quiet for a moment. Edward let his hands glide from my cheeks down my arms to hold mine. We couldn't look at each other. There was too much left unspoken between us.

"You don't have feelings for me then?" he questioned. His Adam's apple quivered and I felt my heart clench. I couldn't imagine that I was the one making Edward nervous.

"I...I do. I think I do."

"You think?"

This time, _I_ arched my brow at _him_.

"All right," he allowed. "'Think' is good enough...for now, at least."

"Well, aren't we ambitious." I couldn't help but give him a hard time.

He laughed at my statement, his face a little more red than usual. "Shut up," he jested and bent his head to stare at his feet. We stood there for a while longer before Edward spoke again. "So...I don't really wanna go back into lecture now."

I smiled. "Ya. Lecture does seem kind of out now, doesn't it?"

This time, we both laughed and Edward pulled me by the hand toward the exit. I followed willingly.

It was still cold, but the winds were letting up. I had no jacket on today, but it felt nice to be out in the open air. Mostly, I was just relieved that what had happened between Edward and me hadn't been what I'd thought. In the blink of an eye, I found myself back in Edward's apartment, perched on his unmade bed and buzzing with dizzying excitement. Leonard Cohen played softly from the CD player on Edward's nightstand and I knew I had never felt so happy in my whole life.

Suddenly, all the years of heartbreak just didn't matter anymore because being here with him made me feel so alive. It was all so far away: my dead father, my sick, blitzed out mother, my anxiety. When he kissed me, it all fell away. I whimpered a little, letting my mouth fall further open as his hand ran up my sides and into my hair.

"Edward..." I hummed.

He kissed me once chastely and pulled back a bit so he could see my face. "Are you okay, Bella?" he questioned, his eyebrows pulled together into a worried line. Obviously, he'd misunderstood the meaning behind my words.

I nodded. "Yes, I'm great."

Gripping one of his hands in mine, I guided his palm to my chest. I wanted him to understand, that even though I was inexperienced, the way he touched me was eagerly welcomed. I arched my back and pressed him into me. I felt his hesitation but ignored it, running my own hands lower on his body, hoping that he would understand what I wanted. His body fell over me then, crushing me into the bed. It wasn't uncomfortable. Edward's weight, the way his arms seemed to be everywhere, enclosing me: it all made me feel so safe. I ran my feet over the back of his legs, practically begging him with my body.

"Stop teasing me." Edward murmured against my lips. I could feel him smiling.

"I'm not teasing you, Edward." He angled his head so he could kiss my neck and I whimpered again. "Oh, Edward, please."

I knew it was stupid for me to initiate sex for the second time. I knew the smart thing to do would be for me to wait and let him chase me. I knew I shouldn't be so readily available, but I couldn't help myself. I felt drunk on his touches. Nothing had ever made me this high.

Before I'd met Edward, every day had been the same. I lived in shades of gray, always dreaming of color but never getting to see it for myself. Suddenly, I was experiencing those feelings I had so often heard about while singing along to old rock albums in my bedroom. Edward and I were Technicolor and the idea of being anything else suddenly terrified me.

I felt Edward's arousal against me and adjusted us so he was pressing into me at just the right angle. When he groaned in my ear, I knew I had done something right. "Edward...oh, please." I hummed.

"Ugh...you'll be the death of me." he chuckled but the desire was thick in his voice.

"Everybody has to die somehow," I whispered, sucking on his earlobe.

In a matter of minutes, we were naked and panting again. I closed my eyes as he eased slowly inside of me for the second time. It felt a little tight, but it didn't hurt. I let him move in and out of me a few times before opening my eyes again.

When I looked up, I was struck by Edward's expression. Everything had been so rushed the first time, but now our lovemaking was slow and very...personal. I was impossibly close to him, of course, but when he looked at me that way, as if I was his oxygen, it almost stopped my heart.

I wasn't entirely sure that I had ever been loved by anyone.

I was just Bella.

I was there.

But no one _needed _me. The way Edward's eyes roamed my features, however, made him look desperate, almost as though he were afraid that if he looked away from me I would disappear. My breath came heavy, and, for once, I wasn't afraid of the intensity behind his gaze.

It felt as though we spent an eternity on that bed, rocking and rolling together, kissing and nipping and biting at hot skin. I felt raw inside. It was a strange feeling, similar to anxiety but beautiful and thrilling. I felt giddy, uncontainable.

"Oh, Edward, Ed...Edward...ah, oh..."

I felt him coming with me and exhaled sharply, gripping him tighter and pulling hard at his unkempt auburn hair.

"Bella?" I heard vaguely through the fog, still coming down from our high. His voice vibrated against my chest, making my heart pound all over again.

"Yeah?" I asked, running my fingers gingerly over his soft curls.

"If I have to die...that seems like a pretty good way to go." he chuckled and I did too.

I smacked his shoulder playfully and relaxed into the bed.

"Well, I would be happy to oblige." I teased.

After a few minutes, Edward rolled off me and pulled my body close beside him, his arms coming to rest around my waist. He moved my hair away from my neck and kissed along my shoulder tenderly, his eyelashes brushing my skin and making me shiver against him.

"This is how it should have been the first time," he murmured and I smiled.

"No. That wouldn't be like us. We're fighters."

We both laughed because it was true. Then, I realized...

We were _something_.

This thought blew me out of the water. Edward, the handsome, witty boy I had met in lecture a little over a month before, wanted to be something with me. I had fought him and ignored him and made trouble out of nothing, and after all was said and done, he still hoped that I would tell him I had feelings for him too. I rolled over to face him and kissed him slowly, taking my time, breathing him in.

"Bella..."

"Mmm..."

"Did you think we'd do this? I mean, when we met did you...see yourself with me at all?"

That was a complicated question to answer. "I think I thought about you...a lot." I laughed because it was embarrassing how much I had obsessed over Edward and our communications. "I saw us...but I didn't think...I never thought it would actually happen."

Edward nodded, kissing my nose briefly. "I should have found you and told you all this the other day. I'm sorry. I tried to get your number from Alice and Rose, but they wouldn't tell me...I think I scared them a little. I was kind of crazed when I got to lab. I didn't even stay the whole time. I left as soon as I figured out you weren't coming. Which reminds me...I'm going to need a way to reach you, Miss Dwyer-Swan."

Edward winked at me and I rolled my eyes.

"I suppose I can give you my cell phone number. It's very secret, you know."

Edward scoffed, letting out one hard laugh. "I know. Did you know that friend of yours is a bulldog?"

"Rose?" I asked.

"No, Alice. Apparently, she thought I'd murdered you or something...or maybe I had you locked up in my dungeon with all the other sex slaves."

"Oh, my God! Edward, that's awful." I cried, giggling when he tickled my sides.

"Yeah. I'm keeping you here now. You're not allowed to leave my bed. You're going to be my vampire bride." Edward showed his teeth and hissed at me, winking his eye and sending me into hysterics.

"Do I get to live in a castle?" I managed between hits of laughter.

"This is a castle, isn't it?"

"But, of course. I should have known."

He pressed his lips to mine one more time and I nuzzled into his chest.

We fell asleep together, and for the first time in years, I slept peacefully.


	11. Chapter 11

Die Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. Again, thank you to Fran for all of her help and guidance with this story. Also, thanks to all the people continuing to read and leaving me reviews. I love hearing from you guys. It seriously makes my day and I love to hear reader's thoughts on what's going on in the story. :)

We woke up a few hours later with only five minutes to spare. Edwardthrew me my clothes and we both hurried to get dressed. I couldn't afford to take another zero on a lab and I certainly couldn't afford the distaste my TA might develop for me if I perpetually skipped.

I realized as we were heading out the door that I had left my bag and jacket in the lecture hall. My chest tightened. My pills were in that bag. How was I supposed to live without my medication?

"Is everything okay?" Edward asked, brushing my hair away from my face and opening the door.

I nodded though it wasn't really. "Yeah. I'm great." I offered him a tight smile. "I just realized that...When everything was going on, I forgot to go back to my seat and grab my stuff. _Everything_ is in that bag." And by _everything, _I meant my Valium.

Edward frowned. "Well, maybe Alice and Rose grabbed it."

I hoped to God they had. "Yeah, maybe."

By the time we made it to the lab building on the far side of campus, we were a good ten minutes late. We slipped in as quietly as we could manage, coming in right in the middle of the lab instructions. I sat at my usual place beside Alice and Rose's portion of the bench. When she heard my chair move, Alice's head whipped around. She leaned close and whispered, "Oh, my God, Bella. Thank, God, you're okay!"

I stiffened as she wrapped an arm around me. Our activities warranted a warning glare from the TA and I hoped I hadn't made her too mad.

"Thanks, Alice. I'm fine." When she pulled back, she looked outraged. I had never seen Alice so angry. "What's the matter?"

"_What the matter?_ Bella, the last time you disappeared with _him, _I found you...ugh! And then, you just leave the lecture with him _again_ and never come back? I didn't even know what to think, Bella."

"Do you have my stuff?" I asked hopefully. Honestly, I couldn't focus on anything but getting my prescription back. Alice scowled at me. Perhaps, that had been a little inappropriate.

"Yes, I have your stuff, Bella."

"Oh, thank goodness."

She tossed me my bag and I hugged it to my chest, along with my threadbare old jacket. "Where were you today?" she hissed, eyes wide.

"I'm sorry, Alice." I heard someone say from my left. I turned to find Edward peering around me, his signature crooked smile lighting up his features. I felt my stomach flip-flop. "It's my fault. Bella was with me. We should have come back and told you we were leaving."

"I don't have anything to say to you." Alice huffed.

Rose, who had been silent up until now finally piped in. "Al, don't berate Bella for finally getting some. Look at how much more relaxed she is. If you ask me, Edward's done us a public service."

"There's nothing wrong with Bella just the way she always was. Ever since she met _Edward, _she's been all over the place. You didn't see her Monday night. It was...not Bella."

"Hello!" I hissed at them, giving my lab instructions a cursory glance before passing them off to Edward. "Can we not talk about _Bella _as if _Bella _isn't here?"

Alice nodded and Rose scoffed.

"Sorry, Bel."

"It's okay, Al. Thanks for the concern but I really am fine."

Edward and I divided our tasks between the two of us and set to work on today's assignment. I half considered popping a couple of my little blue pills but decided I didn't really need them. Instead, I mindlessly measured out the samples and deposited them into our LB plates. Today, I was somewhere else. I was back in Edward's bed. I thought about the possibility of Edward taking me home with him after lab today and the idea made me giddy. I was entirely consumed by the events of the past few days. I felt like a different person. I couldn't stop smiling, couldn't stop stealing glances at Edward as we worked. Why was everything suddenly so different?

I noticed halfway through prepping our materials that Edward seemed uncomfortable. I felt my face fall. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop and here it was.

"You okay?" I questioned. I felt as though everyone had been asking that a lot lately.

Edward nodded, pursing his lips. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitating. "What did Alice mean when she said Rose didn't see you the other night?"

There was a sudden tension between us. I didn't want to tell him how upset I'd been. I didn't want him to see that side of me.

I felt myself crashing.

I was panicking again.

There were so many things that Edward didn't know about me, so many ugly things that I hadn't told him. What if he didn't understand? What if he wanted nothing to do with any of it? I wasn't sure I would be able to blame him if he didn't.

"It's nothing. I don't wanna talk about it." My evasion came out in a rushed whisper. Edward's brows furrowed.

"Can we not do this, Bella? You don't need to hide things from me. If we're going to be...whatever we're going to be...you have to be honest with me."

I sighed because I knew he was right. I couldn't lie to him.

"Fine. After I had left your place on Monday, I went home and got rip roaring drunk. Okay? It was really embarrassing and Alice called me and realized I was blitzed and came over."

"So...I guess this isn't a regular habit of yours then?" Edward asked, his eyes carefully avoiding mine. I felt as though this was some sort of breach in the contract. Why did I have to share my truths with him if he couldn't even give me the courtesy of reading his eyes?

"No." I snapped, ready to move on from this topic. I was ashamed of my actions. I hated alcohol. I hated what it turned people into, but I had done it anyway, perhaps a bit too well. "I _never_ drink. I hate drinking."

Again, Edward nodded without looking at me. I waited impatiently for him to let me in on what he was thinking. I couldn't stand the suspense any longer. I stopped what I was doing and fixed my eyes on the side of his face, hoping that he would notice them burning a hole in his cheek and give me the answers that I wanted. I saw him catch my gaze in his peripheral vision and raised a brow, tapping my foot anxiously. He stopped and turned to me, taking a deep breath.

"I'm so sorry, Bella."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"I'm just so damn sorry. I should have handled this better..."

"No. Don't be sorry. It's my fault, too." I added the _too _because there was no way I was letting him off the hook. I was too proud for that.

Edward silently agreed with me and resumed whatever it was he was doing.

Lab felt long and torturous. I couldn't stand the silent tension between us. I wanted to touch him, wanted to look at him, but there were too many eyes on us. The last thing I wanted was to draw everyone else into whatever it was that Edward and I had. I wasn't even sure what I was to him yet, or what he was to me. However, something in the pit of my stomach made me feel as if this was the beginning of something big. It was that same feeling you get the night before leaving on a trip or the last day of school, as though you're finally about to get something that you've been anticipating for a long time.

The two of us sat through our incubation time somewhat quietly while the rest of the class buzzed around us. The boy on the side of the bench opposite me flirted with the pretty foreign girl he had as a partner and another two poked fun at his efforts. Rose and Alice talked with one another in the corner of our bench, leaning over work they had made mistakes on and giggling about things I had never really understood … though I thought that now I might. Either way, I could never talk about Edward and me the way the girls would talk about the men they had been with in the past. Everything between us seemed so private, so personal.

Toward the end of lab, the TA asked us to look at our samples under a microscope. I plugged in the heavy machine and flipped on the switch. I grabbed one of the mounts we had made and struggled a bit with the clamps on the platform. My hands were shaking again. I wasn't sure if it was my lack of coordination or my nerves, but it made my cheeks flush. Suddenly, I felt cool hands steadying my own, lifting the metal mechanism and fastening the slide into place. I turned to Edward and smiled.

"Shaky hands," I said shrugging and he smiled so brilliantly I couldn't help but beam back at him.

"Sure." he scoffed, leaning in close and whispering under his breath, "Your blush betrays you."

I pursed my lips, ever the stubborn one. "Not nervous." I insisted.

My eyes slid to the right and I caught sight of Alice and Rose, eyes glued to Edward and my interaction, mouths slightly agape. I questioned them with my eyes. I knew this was different for me. I knew it was sudden. But I didn't like the way their attention seemed to have shifted from trying to convince me to sleep around to critiquing my exploits. Rose and Alice always seemed to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Why should I be held to a different standard? I appreciated that they were concerned about my wellbeing, but I was a big girl. I could handle myself...kind of.

Maybe that wasn't exactly true.

Either way, I decided not to think about my inclination towards instability. I liked the way Edward made me feel and I didn't want to think any deeper regarding the subject. Didn't I deserve that? To be happy, if only for a little while? I smiled at the girls and offered them a thumbs up. It was the lamest consolation I could have come up with, but it was the best I could do. I felt stupid with excitement and it was seeping into all of my actions. Maybe I was crazy but I couldn't bring myself to care.

Edward and I went to turn in our final work and I could feel my breath catching. Lab had never felt so long. The line to our TA's table seemed endless and I tapped my foot impatiently. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Edward smirking at me.

I turned to face him, my eyebrows shooting up in the air. "What?"

He shook his head and laughed, presumably at me. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing," I exclaimed, a bit too defensively.

"I've never seen you this keyed up before. You're like..._perky_."

I squinted my eyes at him, sticking out my tongue to let him know that I was joking.

"You two are sickening." I heard someone whisper behind me. When I turned, it was Rose. "I love it. Don't let Alice berate you. You two are having a little fun. What's the harm in that?"

What was the harm in it?

I felt ecstatic, but something about the way Rose had said 'having a little fun' bothered me. The gears in my brain began to turn, against my better judgment, and I found myself following the rather depressing line of thought Rose had set me on. Edward had obviously had sex with other girls and I was just one of them. But, to me, Edward was in a league of his own. We _were _having fun that was true. But did that mean the fun would eventually end? Of course. I wasn't that naive. I knew that nothing lasted forever and no one actually ended up with their first. Could I even see myself ending up with anybody?

It occurred to me that up until this point in my life, I had never really thought of any sort of future for myself. I was just drifting through life haphazardly, never giving a single thought to the kind of person I wanted to be or the type of life that might make me happy because I had _never _been happy. I was only trying to get through one day at a time.

I woke up, got dressed, took my pills, and went to sleep. That was life and I suppose I thought it would continue indefinitely.

I wasn't looking for anything.

I didn't expect anything.

Then, there was Edward.

I looked at his profile, hoping he wouldn't catch me staring again. He was so strong, proud, and confident. He was everything that I had never been. He was persistent, that was for sure, and I respected him for that. He knew what he wanted, at least more so than I did. Since he had come into my life, I had been breathing Edward day and night and I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. All I knew was that it scared me to death.

I admired the way his nose sloped, breaking its continuity near the bridge so that itlooked just slightly crooked. He had long eyelashes for a guy and a sharp jaw. He was tall and lanky. The big sweaters and button-ups he wore reminded me of Kurt Cobain, but his smile was all Edward-witty and sly as though he knew something that no one else did.

Edward's head turned and his gaze caught mine. We were the next partners in line and he urged me forward. I smiled and handed over our papers. Edward talked to the TA and she beamed at him because he just had that effect on people. Edward was light and friendly, totally unlike me.

"You ready to go?"

I nodded though I wasn't quite sure exactly where we were going or why he assumed we would be going there together. I was tied in knots trying to decide whether I was secure or insecure in whatever sort of relationship Edward and I had. But he was floating on air; all of the anxiety he had displayed earlier was gone. He wasn't worried about anything, I could tell.

I told Rose and Alice that I would see them on Friday and Alice asked me to call her when I got home. I wondered briefly if I would be going home at all tonight.

In my mind, my relationship with Edward had been propelled into the stratosphere. Suddenly, he was everything. I was obsessed though I had only known him for a few short months.This, I had been told, was one of the biggest flaws in my character.

I fixated.

Edward had been one of those fixations for a while now, even if I didn't want to admit it. Everything I had done since January had either begun or ended with Edward. Part of me liked to think that it was some cosmic power that had been working to bring us together. Maybe, I kept being dropped into his lap because I was meant to be there.

However, I couldn't shake the nagging suspicion that I had been doing it on purpose. Suddenly, I realized I had been looking and waiting for Edward, just as he had been looking and waiting for me. The allure of the campus was not the silence or the solitude. Maybe, all semester, I had been showing up here after classes in hopes of running into Edward the way I had that first night in the library.

If that was the case, it had worked beautifully.

When we were alone again, Edward asked me what I was doing later. This made me laugh. After everything we had shared with one another, Edward's strategic approach to our relationship had not changed. I got the feeling that Edward liked to keep things casual. He was light and humorous-again, nothing like me, but I liked it. I liked the way he made everything seem so easy, as though we had known each other all of our lives. I did not intimidate him and neither did my quirks and oddities. He disregarded them. They were only another part of me, the same as any other part. I just hoped this trend would continue.

"I don't have any plans in particular. Why do you ask?" I responded, glancing up at him, a small smirk playing on my lips.

His smile was blinding. "Well...I've been your lab partner for, what … two months now? And we've had study dates, kinda...and accidental meetings and a hookup or two..." he winked at me and I felt my cheeks heat. "I thought maybe it was time we actually sat down and had a meal together, you know, like two respectable participants in a mutually agreed upon courtship."

I tried not to laugh. Edward was struggling to keep a straight face.

"Respectable, mutually agreed upon courtship, huh?"

He nodded. A chuckle escaped his mouth when he tried to speak. "Yeah...or dating. Whichever term you prefer."

"Should I draw up a contract?" I questioned, raising a brow at him. It was cold and the wind was blowing fairly hard, causing my hair to fall into my face, but I didn't notice.

"Would that help my chances of holding onto you? Like, is there a six-month lease or ...?"

I smacked his arm. "Ah, shut up!"

"I'm kidding! I'm kidding!"

He pulled me into him and led me across the street toward the cafeteria where the girls and I usually ate lunch. Typically, I didn't stay on campus after labs. I didn't like driving home in the dark by myself, but now that I was with Edward. I wasn't thinking about that. I wasn't thinking about anything, in fact, other than what was going to happen between us tonight.

"Edward, I'm totally broke right now." I reminded him.

He just shrugged, ignoring my protest and ushering me towards the entrance. He gave the lady at the register his student card and told her that he'd like to pay for mine as well. I gave him a look, which he also ignored.

"Thank you." He smiled and pulled me along beside him, leading me towards a booth near the back.

"Edward, you didn't need to do that."

"Oh, yes, I did. Think of it as me investing in my future," he jested, winking at me as he threw his bag down on the bench on the opposite side of the small, white table.

I rolled my eyes even though his words made my stomach flip-flop.

We separated then, heading in different directions and joining the dinner lines at various stations of the cafeteria. I grabbed a tray and filled it up with whatever looked edible: soup, fries, apple pie, and broccoli salad. I poured myself a cup of coffee. I could feel a headache coming on and wondered if it was because I had skipped a dosage. Even if that was the cause of my discomfort, I didn't want to take out my pills in front of Edward. He probably knew about them. He had seen them the day I'd bumped into him in the cafeteria, but some part of me hoped he had overlooked them.

I didn't want to call attention to _that_ part of myself.

Not right now, at least.

I made my way back to the table and waited silently for Edward, nibbling on my fries and thinking how much things had changed between us since Monday. I had to admit that I had underestimated him. He was a better guy than I had given him credit for, or at least, he seemed to be.

"Bella?" I heard someone say over my shoulder.

I turned to meet the eyes of whoever had spoken. I did not recognize him. Had I met him before? Apparently, he knew me.

"Um...I'm sorry?"

"You're in K-101 lab with me, right? You sit at the table right across from mine."

I racked my brain trying to remember seeing him. I must have, but I couldn't recall. He was fairly average: nondescript. His hair was dirty blonde, his eyes pale blue, his skin slightly tanned. I was sure there were a hundred boys just like him at this school. He was a dime a dozen.

I pretended to remember him. "Oh, yeah, I don't think we've ever really met before, though."

"No." he conceded. "It's Mike, Mike Newton; really nice to finally meet you, Bella."

"Yeah." I responded, unsure of what else I was supposed to say. What was the point of him coming over here?

I waited for him to leave, but he didn't, he just stood there looking at me. Thankfully, Edward slid into the seat across from mine a moment later.

"Oh. Hey, Mike. What's shakin'?" he asked, smiling up at my unexpected visitor.

"Oh. Edward. You know Bella?"

Edward's brow scrunched in confusion. "Well, she is my lab partner."

"Oh, right. Okay. Cool." Mike looked away from Edward quickly, turning his attention back to me. "I'll see you around then, Bella?"

"Um...sure?"

He was gone just as abruptly as he'd appeared and there I sat, confused.

"What was that all about?" Edward queried, his crooked smile breaking my heart a little.

"I have no idea." I shook my head. "I don't...I don't even know that guy. Do you know him?"

Edward nodded _'yes,'_ then broke out into a fit of laughter.

"I think you have an admirer, Bella."

I pursed my lips, lifting my mug of coffee to take a sip.

"I'm not amused."

Edward shook his head. "You never are. Poor guy."

I ignored his comment. "Are you suggesting that Mike is my only admirer?" I probed, curious to see what Edward would say. I would be a liar if I said I wasn't fishing for compliments.

Edward tilted his head from side to side. "The thing is...I'm not an admirer. An admirer is someone who has a particular regard for someone."

"All right, Mr. Human-Dictionary." I stuck my tongue out at him, popping a fry into my mouth and taking another sip of coffee.

"Well, the point is...I'm kinda hoping you consider me to be something more than an admirer."

My heart was in my throat.

I swallowed hard, hoping Edward wouldn't notice the effect he had on me.

"I might." I managed to say, my voice sounding a bit more mouse-like than I would have liked.

Edward nodded, accepting my vague reply.

We sat in silence for a few moments, our eyes locked on one another. It was strange how comfortable I felt. All my life I had kept the people around me at a distance. I came naturally to me. I wasn't sure that I really knew how to be close and open. Nevertheless, suddenly, I found myself wanting Edward to know me—really, truly know me.

I felt his fingers skimming over the bare skin of my forearm and the contact made me shiver.

I smiled.

Everything had suddenly changed and I had never felt anything more exhilarating.

I felt alive.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

I woke up panting.

I was gripped with panic again though I had no idea why. I never did. It was just something that happened. My thoughts raced, my heart pounded. I felt dizzy, as though I couldn't grasp my bearings on what was reality. It was the worst feeling, the same feeling I had lived with for most of my life. When I was little, I used to sit in bed at night and think about everything. About how I would die one day, how I was growing ever older, how maybe I would never do anything great, never fall in love or go on an adventure. I would sit with bleary eyes, staring at the ceiling, but I never cried. Anxiety was too numbing to allow that. So, I lived my life on this precipice, always waiting with baited breath to go tumbling over the edge.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to breath. I found my hand slipping over the side of the bed in search of my bag, but I didn't find it. Instead, I found the warmth of another person.

My eyes shot open, my breath catching. But, this time, when I shot up in bed, I was met by Edward's arms. He pulled me to him, still half-asleep, and kissed along my jaw, up to my nose and then my forehead. I worked to steady my breathing. I had forgotten that I'd stayed the night with him. It all seemed so surreal.

I laid there in his arms for a while as he fell back to sleep, his breath returning to its even pattern, his heart beating steadily against my hand. Our clothes were discarded on the floor at the end of the bed, our bare skin pressed flush with one another. I watched him, the way his lips parted slightly every time he inhaled, the way his Adam's apple quivered when he swallowed, the way his eyelashes fluttered ever so slightly. I noticed a slight five-o'clock shadow developing in little auburn tufts against his pale skin.

He was beautiful.

I was absolutely terrified.

I felt my breathing speeding up again and quickly slipped out of Edward's grip, making my way quickly to the kitchen where I had left my bag near the front door. Shuffling through the plethora of random shit I had stocked in there, I frantically emptied my bottle of Valium into my palm and counted out my new, higher dosage. I had never felt this way before. After swallowing my pills dry, I plopped down on the cold linoleum, still completely naked, and sighed, looking up at Edward's motionless form. My chest felt tight. I was almost nauseous, but not quite. My hands were shaking. I was scared. What had I done? What did this mean? I didn't know how to feel—not about the sex or the man, or the fact that I had become entirely absorbed by him.

For a moment, I considered getting dressed and leaving before he awoke. I didn't have any classes today so there was no reason for me to stay. I could go home, go back to my normal life and forget all about the ridiculously frightening emotion that was settling in my chest. Before all this had happened, my life had been so safe, so predictable. I had a routine and realistic expectations for my life. But, since I had met Edward, everything had been on tilt. Every day had become an opportunity for a new interaction between us and I knew it wouldn't end if I stayed.

This brought me to an entirely new line of questioning.

What if all of this, everything that I had with him, ended?

Logic told me that none of this could end well. I had jumped into bed with the first man I had ever met with whom I shared the kind of sexual tension I had always believed was a complete fantasy. I had never believed someone could make me feel so needy and desperate, but Edward did. If and when it was all over, how would I move on from that?

"Bella?" I heard him mumbled in his pillow, his voice deep and gravelly.

I jumped up quickly, scampering to where my clothes were splayed in a messy, inside out pile on the dingy beige carpet.

"Are you leaving?"

When I looked up, halfway through the process of pulling my tights back on, I was met with concerned eyes. Edward looked almost hurt and the sight crushed me.

"Um...I..." I didn't know what to say. How could I explain to him that my system of self-preservation had reached DEFCON 1 and that I had been planning to flee the premises before things got any more serious?

"Do you have somewhere you need to be? I can walk you if you want?"

I paused, trying to figure out what I should say. It was impossible to think about leaving when he looked at me that way. As if he would do just about anything to spend a few extra minutes together. How could I say no to him? How could I give that up?

"No. I don't have anywhere to be. I thought you might be busy today and I don't want to be a burden. Plus, I'm sure my mom is probably wondering where I am." I was only partially a lie. I wasn't sure that Edward wanted me to stay, but I was sure Renee hadn't noticed my absence. She never noticed anything.

"Oh..." was all he said. We sat there, eyes locked, for a moment before I finally found my voice.

"Do you want me to stay?" It came out much smaller than I would have liked. Why was I suddenly so intimidated by him?

He looked at me as ifI was crazy, running a hand nervously through his disheveled hair. "Bella, I always want you to stay."

I sighed, more than a little relieved. I slipped my tights back down my leg and crawled up on the bed, plopping down next to him. In all honesty, I was still pretty tired, and now that my meds we kicking in, the irrational anxiety that had been choking me a few moments before seemed to be fading. Maybe it was just psychological, or maybe it was the way Edward treated me. I had never had someone care about me like that. No one ever wondered where I was or when I was coming back. Alice and Rose checked in to make sure I was alive, but that was the extent of it. Edward didn't just want to know about me; he wanted me to be with him, wanted me to give him my time, wanted to give me his. It wasn't because he felt he needed to, not because he was worried about me or because he felt obligated. He _liked_ being with me.

It was mind-blowing.

"Maybe you should call your mom," He mumbled into my hair, wrapping his arms around me again and pulling me into his body. I slipped my legs under the covers and closed my eyes for a moment before responding.

"Renee won't care. I was actually more concerned about wearing out my welcome."

Edward laughed hard, squeezing me slightly and kissing the skin along my hairline. "That's ridiculous, Bella. I've been trying to lure you into my bed for months now. I'm not in any hurry to get you out of it."

I stuck my tongue out at him, wondering for a moment if I had given in too easily. Regardless, it was too late now.

"Renee?" he asked, seemingly suddenly curious. Maybe he thought he had missed something.

"Yeah. That's my mom. Good ol' Renee."

"Ah, cool. I wish my parents let me call them by their first names," he chuckled lightheartedly, but I didn't. There was nothing funny about my relationship with my mother.

"I guess." I agreed halfheartedly. It wasn't very convincing.

"Do you guys not get along or something?"

"Huh." There was no humor in my voice. "We aren't exactly soulmates."

Edward nodded, running his fingers lightly over the skin of my arm, leaving goosebumps in their wake. I loved it when he touched me and I hated that the sensation was being tainted with talk of my mother ilty that I had no idea where she was or what she was doing. We each lived our own separate lives. That was how it was and I had never much questioned it. But what if Bree felt the same way I did? It was somethand her many shortcomings.

"What about your dad?" Edward wondered and I shivered, more from the way his hands grazed my sides than from the actual inquiry itself.

"Uh...he died when I was little. It's just my mom and me...and my little sister."

"Oh," he replied again, not pushing me any farther.

I decided to let him in. I couldn't tell him everything, but I could tell him _some _things. It was now or never.

"My mom drinks a lot. She has some health problems...like serious ones. I don't think she's handled any of it well...not my dad or her sickness. Bree and I have basically been on our own."

I felt bad that I wasn't closer to my sister. I felt guing I worried about almost every day.

Edward was silent for a moment while he let it all sink in. I felt him tense under me, his chest muscles—the same muscles I had watched flex and twitch as he came undone inside of me—tensed under my hands. "That's why you don't drink?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yeah. I try to stay away from it. I don't like what alcohol does to people. I've seen it with my mom. She's not Renee when she's drunk. She's this other person, especially lately; she's that other person all the time. Actually, I'd never ever drank before recently. It just always seemed so scary to me...like I was gonna turn into Mr. Hyde or something."

Edward nodded tightly, and for a moment, I wondered what was wrong. When I glanced upwards to meet his gaze, he was looking at me, his eyes burning with some emotion I couldn't quite place.

"I'm...I'm really sorry, Bella."

He looked absolutely broken.

"It's okay," I assured him, my hand coming up to cup his cheek. Should he have felt guilty? Maybe a little. But not for causing me to drink. That had been my own decision. The only thing Edward had failed at doing was communicating with me.

"No, it's not. I handled everything between us terribly. I think I was so worried about messing this...whatever it is that he have...I was so worried I would mess it up that I said just about the most stupid shit ever and I hurt you and I didn't mean to do that, Bella. I really didn't."

I nodded. "I know that, Edward. I'm a big girl. The things I do don't have anything to do with you."

Again, Edward was silent.

"But...what if I wanted the things you do to have things to do with me?"

It was such a convoluted sentence, it made me laugh: loudly and uncontrollably.

"Oh, my God, Edward. You're impossible."

"Must you be so coy?" he raised a brow at me and I did the same in return. Edward was hoping to drag some sort of information out of me regarding my feelings for him, but I was resolved to keep my mouth shut. It was all too sudden, too impulsive...too scary.

"Yes, I must."

"Fine," he huffed, making me smile. "But, I'll have you know I have a plan to break you down. It's already in motion. And, since I'm apparently quite sexually irresistible, I'm fairly confident it's going to work."

I shoved him playfully in the arm. "You're such a ridiculous person."

"Yeah, but you love it."

As soon as the word fell from his lips, I froze and so did he. Edward hadn't been expecting it any more than I had, from what I could tell, and it made both of us uncomfortable. What did I say to that? That I did love it? Love him? Because I knew that I very well might. It was the way he smiled, the way he talked, the jokes he told me, the way nothing I said ever seemed to phase him. He was ready for anything. He forgave me. He asked me to forgive him. He was incredible, like no one I had ever met in my entire life.

I admired him. I wanted to be like him. I wanted _him_.

Did I love him?

Oh, God, what if I was in love with him?

I felt his lips on my cheek, trailing down towards my mouth. When our lips met, I felt the heat rising to my face. _The things he did to me... _Now that we had been so intimate, now that I knew what it was like to be with him, I couldn't get the image out of my mind. Everything he did, every touch in between, was suddenly overtly sexual. When he looked at me, all I could think about was the way he looked at me when we were making love, (if that's what you wanted to call it). The way his eyebrows scrunched together in concentration, the sounds he made, the way his lips parted slightly as he huffed out laboured breaths. I wanted to do it over and over again. I wanted him to destroy me, lock me up in his apartment and have his wicked way with me. It was all fine by me, because, if I was being honest with myself, there was no part of Edward that I didn't want.

When he rolled me onto my back and pushed inside of me, I lost track of all rational thought.

This was everything.

This was what being alive was like.

I had never felt it until now, never lived it until now. My entire life, I had spent my time wondering why I felt so empty but, at that moment, I knew. I had been waiting for this, waiting for him.

"Oh, Edward. Oh, God..." It was all too much.

"I love this, Bella. I love...ugh..."

I nodded, unable to speak anymore. He thrust into me, faster and faster until I was crying out, probably embarrassing myself, but I didn't care. Let the neighbors hear me. It didn't matter. I wanted this, all of it.

When it was over, Edward held me and told me that he'd thought a lot about what it would be like to be with me since we'd met at the beginning of the semester. I'd laughed and asked him if it had been all that he'd dreamed of.

"More, actually...since I never really thought it was going to happen...at least, not after that first night in the library."

"Hm." I agreed, remembering what he had said to me.

"Quoting _'The Bad Touch'_ may have been a mistake on my part."

"Ha! You think?"

"Maybe," he told me, grinning like a little kid. We stared at each other, but it wasn't awkward. In fact, I didn't want to look away. I felt so connected to him; as if I could say anything at this moment. I was comfortable: an emotion that usually eluded me. "I guess I made all the right mistakes, though, right?"

I cocked my head to the side in question. "How so?"

"I got the girl in the end, didn't I?" Edward was so sure of himself.

"What makes you think that?"

He didn't say anything, just pressed his lips firmly to mine. I felt his erection against my thigh, and groaning against his mouth, my hands moved up to grip at the little tufts of hair at the nape of his neck.

"You see?" he said, smiling at me. "The lady has been conquered."

And was I ever conquered.


	13. Chapter 13

Born To Die

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. Shout out to Fran for being the best Beta reader ever. :)

My relationship with Edward continued in this fashion for the next six weeks: meeting up before lectures for coffee, grabbing lunch after, sneaking away to Edward's apartment after lab and staying in bed for hours. Half of the time, we would fall asleep afterward and I would end up staying the night at his place. It had gotten to the point that I slept in his bed more than I slept in my own and, perhaps foolishly, I was hoping that it would go on like this indefinitely. I had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, to have a realization of some fatal flaw in Edward's character. I had concocted all of these theories in my mind; he was just interested in sleeping with me, he would get sick of having me around after hooking up a few times. The list went on and on. But the more time I spent with my lab partner turned love interest, the more I began to see that Edward really was a great guy. He cared about me and I cared about him.

However, I wasn't exactly sure what those feelings meant.

Edward never mentioned the word girlfriend, not that I did either. We just sort of _were_. There was some kind of unspoken agreement between us. Neither one of us wanted to see other people, at least, not that either one of us had communicated.

On Sunday morning, I found myself at home, making eggs and toast for breakfast and chugging down a few cups of coffee before printing out my agenda for Monday. I had thought I was alone. To my dismay, Renee came shuffling in around ten o'clock, wrapped up in her fluffy blue bathrobe and mismatched socks. Her lipstick was smeared. She had been rocking this look since the night before and it made me wonder if she was seeing someone new. I hoped I wouldn't have to meet whomever it was she was fucking around with this time

"Morning," I mumbled, feeling as though I needed to say something.

As usual, my mother mixed herself a screwdriver (hold the orange juice). She took the seat across from me, her eyes fixed on mm in that pensive way she had. It was coming; she was going to say something awful.

I could feel it.

"Where have you been lately?" she questioned, her expression straight. Her voice was hard and raspy. I wondered how much longer she could live this way.

"Around."

"That's pretty vague."

"I meant it to be."

We were in a standoff and I intended to win.

"Who's the lucky man whose bed you've been warming? Or is there more than one?" Her eyebrows shot so high I thought they might disappear into her hairline. Suddenly, I needed a screwdriver.

"Can we not do this?" I wasn't at all in the mood. I just had to make it through today and then I could go back to where I was happy: anywhere in the world except here.

"I'd just like to know what my daughter is doing with her life. Is that a crime? That's what mothers do."

Huffing a deep sigh, I decided it was easier to give her what she wanted than to spend the next thirty minutes avoiding the question. "Fine, if you wanted to know if I'm getting any, I am, okay? I'm getting plenty so just don't worry about it."

"More than one guy? Or is there someone special?"

The tone of her voice when she said the word 'special' made me roll my eyes. "Does it make a difference?"

Renee had never cared if I was happy or not. I'd never told her about boys I liked or my childhood wedding fantasies. She always told me my anxiety was due to my supposed prudery and that I should get out there and test the waters. She didn't deserve to know anything about Edward or how I felt about him.

"I get it. You don't want to tell me you're some frat boy's whore. That's fine. I don't need you to."

I sighed. There was no winning with Renee. I was always wrong. I was either too thin or too curvy, too quiet or too outspoken, too virginal or too promiscuous. None of it mattered. She was bitterly dissatisfied with life and she needed to take her anger out on someone. I had been my mother's punching bag for years.

"I'm gonna go."

I stood up and collected my bag from the corner, making a beeline for the front door. I did not intend to stick around to hear the rest of what she had to say. But today just wasn't my day. Renee flung her chair backward, knocking it to the ground and stomping after me.

"Don't you walk away from me, Isabella! I'm not finished!"

I had reached my limit. "Yes, you are!"

"Do you want to end up like me, Bella? Do you want to literally be fucked? That's what happens, Bella. They leave! They all leave! And whatever quasi-knigh-in –shining-armor-man-child you think likes you so much...guess what, kiddo? He's gonna get sick of you and move on, too!"

I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing evenly.

"I don't have to listen to this." I hummed, shaking my head.

"We are just alike, Bella. I know what you're thinking. You like the attention. He...they...whoever...they make you feel sexy, but it isn't real, hon. Men get bored. I mean, look at you..."

Opening my eyes, I met her gaze. The glass in her hand was empty and her eyeballs were practically floating. I wasn't having a conversation with my mother; I was having an argument with Jim Bean.

"What's that supposed to me?"

"When I was young, I was...you're just so plain, Bella."

I nodded stiffly.

"Goodbye, Renee."

I walked out and never looked back.

Midterms were coming up soon and Edward and I, along with the occasional appearance from Alice or Rose or one of the boys from his complex, spent most of our time in the library. Today, however, it was just us.

"What'd you get for number twelve? How many questions are there on this practice exam again?" I complained, dropping my forehead to the cool, hard surface of my open textbook pages.

I hated biology.

"Um...it's gel electrophoresis." Edward murmured, flipping through his notes absentmindedly. Like just about everything else in life, biology came naturally to Edward.

"Oh, my God, I'm never gonna get the hang of this stuff. I think my brain is melting."

Edward nudged my hand, causing me to look up at him. "Hey. Yes, you will. You just aren't focusing. You have to read the material to understand it, Bella."

This was very true, but I felt distracted.

"I can't stand this building anymore. The white walls are making me nauseous. Can't we go to your place?" My headache was making me whiney.

"I told you, Bella. I promised Emmett he could use it for the evening."

"What, does he have a hot date or something?"

He quirked a brow at me and I scrunched up my face.

"Ugh. Please tell me you plan on cleaning the sheets before you have me back there."

Edward laughed, his smile is almost blinding. "Sure. Of course. I wouldn't dream of taking you in sheets contaminated with Emmett's cooties."

"Thank you."

We were quiet for a moment as I struggled to answer the next question on my study guide. I was getting nowhere. The truth was, I didn't want to be there and wasn't going to get anything accomplished.

"Bella."

"Yeah?"

"Why don't we go to your place?"

His suggestion stopped me dead in my tracks. Panic set in. There was no way I was taking Edward back to my apartment. I shook my head emphatically. "No. That's not a good idea. Trust me."

Edward sighed, his eyes never leaving mine. "Why not?"

"It's just...it's not a good idea, okay?"

"Bella...why don't you want me to meet your family…Are you ashamed of us or something? I don't get it. You live close by and you've never once even suggested I come by your place."

"I don't live close," I argued.

Edward tilted his head to the side, his eyes serious.

"I just...my mom is...unique." I laughed bitterly, remembering the last time we had spoken. I hadn't said a word to her all week, though I hadn't had much of an opportunity. I hadn't been home much and when I was, Renee was either gone or locked up in her bedroom.

"So? She raised _you_. She can't be that bad."

"She can." I insisted.

"Come on, we don't have to have some big family reunion. Just pretend we're back in high school and sneak me into your bedroom. I promise you won't regret it."

Edward's lips ran gingerly over my jaw, making me shiver. When he sucked my earlobe into his mouth, his tongue running over the skin behind my ear, I lost my train of thought. He struck me deaf and dumb. I couldn't help it.

"No..." I hummed, a last ditch effort to convince him to stop pushing the idea. But the thought of him in my bed, of all the things we could do together, the ways he would touch me in the privacy of my own room...I could feel myself getting wet. My hormones were getting the best of me. I wanted him so badly it was painful.

"I want you tonight," he whispered.

That was it.

When we pulled apart, I noticed people staring but I couldn't bring myself to care. How was I expected to worry about what they thought when Edward was talking to me this way, touching me this way? How was I supposed to drive an entire thirty minutes into the suburbs? The anticipation was too much. What Edward and I had between us was very physical. I couldn't say no to him and I didn't want to.

I tried to rationalize his crackpot plan by telling myself that Renee would never notice. She never noticed anything.

"Ugh! Fine. But you have to promise you'll hide in the closet if she comes out of her room. Trust me; it's in the best interest of everyone involved."

Edward rolled his eyes, kissing the tip of my nose as he rose from his chair. He grabbed his leather jacket and shrugged into it, ready to go. "You worry too much."

"You're not wrong," I admitted, pulling my own jacket tight around my body and zipping up the front, smiling tightly at Edward before flinging my bag over my shoulder and heading for the elevators.

Suddenly, he spun me around and cupped my face between his hands. I was surprised, to say the least, and it must have shown on my face because he chuckled quietly to himself before speaking. "Don't worry, Bella. Everything's good. Great."

I felt dizzy.

"Yeah. Great."

It was the longest ride of my life. We drove, hand in hand, the entire time. Edward asked me about where I grew up, where I'd gone to school, and what other schools I had applied to. I told him how I'd lived in Indy my whole life. I'd gone to public school, of course, while Edward's parents had sent him to private Catholic school in order to keep him away from the 'riffraff.' They'd been planning his future since before he was born, unlike Renee. After high school, I hadn't had many options. My SAT scores were high but my budget was very limited and a local state school was the best choice. I could live at home and eliminate the issue of paying rent. Edward had applied to many different places. He was from the area but hadn't been sure if he wanted to stay. Michigan State had been his first choice, but his father had pushed Edward to attend his Alma Mater, Purdue. When Edward got wait-listed, it was decided that IUPUI would suffice.

When we pulled into the parking lot of my complex, the conversation turned to how I had felt about growing up in the suburbs.

"Uh...it's okay. It's a beautiful area. I like it here though we never actually could afford it. Renee is barely hanging on to this place."

Edward nodded solemnly before a small smile crept onto his face. "Tell me what you were like as a kid."

That was a hard question to answer. "Um...I don't know. I was...very independent. My grandma used to say I was an old soul. I really liked reading and drawing, but you already knew that. And music. I've always loved music."

"Disco?" Edward teased and I shoved him in the arm.

"If you must know, it's 70s _rock_, not _disco_...and my dad, Charlie, had a thing for Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, The Cars...stuff like that. He had a lot of records and CDs. I listened to them all the time when I was little. I grew up with it and I love it. It reminds me of my dad."

"Your dad sounds like he was a cool guy," Edward said, probably trying to make me feel better.

"I don't know. I was really young...I don't remember a lot. It's been just Bree, Renee and me...forever."

Edward nodded and leaned towards me, closing the distance between us in one swift motion. When his lips met mine, they were tender and comforting. He meant it to feel that way. He wanted me to know that he cared, that what I had told him had meant something to him. Edward knew it was hard for me to talk about my family or, worse, my feelings.

We pulled apart, breathing heavily.

"You wanna go in?" I asked. It was dark now and I was sure that Renee had already drunk herself into a stupor by this time. It was Friday, which meant Bree, was almost definitely at a friend's house. No one would see us going in.

He nodded eagerly, his forehead still pressed against mine.

We walked in silence; I unlocked the front door, quickly shut it and locked it once again behind us. There was not a single sound to be heard aside from Renee's heavy breathing and the occasional snore. I smiled to myself, spinning to face Edward.

"Welcome to my humble abode," I whispered, wiggling my eyebrows suggestively as I led him into the sitting room and down the hall to my bedroom. The door fell open with a barely audible creak and the two of us slipped inside.

It was pitch black, but I could feel Edward at my back, his hands gripping at the soft flesh at my sides, crawling slowly upwards and under my shirt to my breast. I sighed, feeling content as he pressed my knees against the edge of the bed, his lips teasing the skin at the nape of my neck.

"Thank you for bringing me here, Bella."

"Huh." I snorted. "You're welcome, I guess."

"Turn the lights on." he requested his voice hush.

I craned my neck around to try to meet his eyes, but he was having none of it. He held me securely in place, his fingers pinching my nipples firmly.

I groaned.

"Why?" I asked ever the stubborn one.

"I wanna see your room."

He said this as though it was the most obvious thing in the world and it confused me. What did my bedroom decor have to do with anything that was happening at the moment? How could he think of something so trivial at a time like this? Nonetheless, I flipped the light switch on the wall to my left and the room was illuminated in soft light. When I was fifteen, I had spray painted the glass covering on the overhead light dark blue. While it had gotten me into a lot of trouble with both Renee and the landlord (resulting in a forty dollar debt), I liked it better this way.

Edward let his hands drift lower as he looked around. I could feel him glancing from side to side, carefully examining all of the little sketches, which were taped to the walls. He took in the books piled in the corners, the collection of old rock albums, which I had taken the time to alphabetize, in true Edward fashion. There wasn't much that he missed. He was good that way, and I suppose, had he not been so observant, we probably never would have met.

"This is nice," he told me and I thanked him. "I think I imagined it this way. It's very _you_."

"How so?"

His hands dipped below the waistband of my leggings and I whimpered, still waiting for his response.

"None of it makes any sense. It's all...random little pieces of beautiful things."

I felt the atmosphere between us shift, and suddenly, this was not foreplay. This was something else entirely. It felt intimate in a way that I had never experienced before, in a way that we had never been before. "Not everything in this room is beautiful," I argued though I wasn't really sure that we were talking about the room anymore.

When Edward turned me to face him, his big green eyes were serious and penetrating. I almost stopped breathing. The way he looked at me made my stomach do flips, but not in a bad way. I liked the way my body responded to this side of him, the seemingly unspoken implications behind his words and actions. "_You're _beautiful, Bella...everywhere."

I swallowed hard and let him push me backwards onto the mattress. I fell back easily into the coolness of the un-slept-in sheets, feeling myself preparing for him before he'd even had a chance to unbuckle his belt. He made quick work of my clothing and I watched with satisfaction as Edward removed his t-shirt and jeans before knealing between my legs, his eyes boring into mine. When he pushed into me, he never broke that contact once, though he thrust roughly in and out, making me cry out in soft, broken whispers. His hand came up to cover my mouth as he drove into me harder. I could feel tears pooling in the corners of my eyes. I clutched hungrily at his back, never quite close enough.

I thought I would explode. I was so, so close. However, something made Edward stop, still completely sheathed inside me.

He looked at me with an intensity that almost frightened me, his lips quivering a little along with his hands. He touched my face, pushing impossibly closer to me. We were so close.

He took my breath away.

"Bella..." he murmured, his voice much rawer than I had expected.

"Yeah?"

I waited.

And waited.

_What? _

_Bella, what?_

"Bella...I think...no, I'm sure…that I'm in love with you."


End file.
